


Captured

by OccasionalStorytelling



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Sadness, after a lot of suffering, but its got a happy ending!, connor and nathan are physically and psychologically tortured, connor and rk900 are captured, connor is kinda fragile, deviant emotions are too powerful oh no, eventually, everyone makes it out and is able to recover emotionally, kidnapping? does that apply?, nathan and connor are brothers and they love each other, nathan wants to protect connor, robot-napping, weird never-before-seen gavin au if you're into that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-04 05:23:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15834600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalStorytelling/pseuds/OccasionalStorytelling
Summary: On one of their missions, everything goes wrong and Connor and RK900 (Nathan) are captured. I've never been one for physical angst; I've always been more of a mental or emotional angst sort of writer. But oops, here we go, let's get beat up and injured. This is based on an art project I saw on the tumblr brilcrist--I'll link to it below.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by ["When a mission went wrong and both RK units were taken"](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/411900) by Brilcrist. 



> After the success of the android revolution, Connor decided to continue working with Hank at the DPD. A deviated RK900 unit named Nathan also began working at the DPD, partnered with Gavin Reed. Though Gavin and Nathan trade insults and are known to have physical fights, they really do care about each other.

**Part One: They’ve Got This Covered**

 

The mission started as almost any mission of this sort did. Fowler got the call that an old Cyberlife warehouse was being raided. A group called “the Suggins gang” had been attacking Cyberlife stores across the city for a few weeks now, shooting and shutting down androids as they went. No one knew what they were looking for, but they were causing a lot of damage. Fowler sent a team in, and they managed to trap the Suggins gang in the building. Unfortunately, they’d taken hostages with them. Fowler briefed his top officers on the case, then sent Hank Anderson, Gavin Reed, Connor, and Nathan out to handle it. There was a standard protocol for this kind of situation: Connor would enter first and attempt a negotiation for the hostages. Nathan would circle around and find a good place to break in, just in case negotiations failed. Hank and Gavin were just there to run backup this time—Connor and Nathan made a good team. They’d proven themselves time and again, and so long as they maintained the ability to back their memories up with a Cyberlife server, they couldn’t be killed.

 

“You so much as sneeze on Connor and he dies,” Gavin grumbled, loading his gun.

 

“I do not,” Connor sighed, trying to fix his hair in the car mirror.

 

“We all know that, of the RK models in this car, I’m the strongest and fastest,” Nathan smiled.

 

“Which is why you’re going around the back, and not running the negotiation,” Hank said. “Come on, everyone, it’s one thing to act like this in the DPD, but we’ve actually got a job to do.”

 

“Since when do _you_ care about our jobs?” Gavin said. “You’re just jealous that _my_ RK model is better than yours.”

 

“I am _not_ jealous, because despite whatever fancy upgrades Nathan has, Connor has more experience _and_ is the one programmed to deal with humans in situations _such as this hostage negotiation_ ,” Hank said, checking his own weapon. “Are you ready, Connor?”

 

“I believe so, Lieutenant,” Connor said, adjusting his collar.

 

“Like a fucking prince,” Gavin snorted. “Who knew that experiencing emotions was going to turn Connor into a neat freak?” Nathan glared at his partner, who held his hands up in mock surrender. “Maybe you could show an emotion or two now and then, buddy,” Gavin smiled.

 

“Connor and I are different models. We emote in different ways,” Nathan said, flicking his wrist in annoyance.

 

“Can we _please_ get this show on the road?” Hank said. “I just want to put these guys away, go home, and pet Sumo.”

 

Connor visibly brightened at the mention of Sumo. “I’m going, Lieutenant,” he smiled, getting out of the car. Nathan followed suit and quickly ran off around the edge of the block, trying to circle back around where he wouldn't be seen.

 

“I wish we could get those two some guns,” Hank said, almost to himself.

 

“They don’t even need ‘em,” Gavin said, coming up beside him. “Did we even need to get out of the car? They’ve got this covered.”

 

Hank smiled, despite himself, and playfully shoved Gavin aside. “Let’s just be ready for anything,” Hank said.

 

**Part Two: Connor Did Not Have This Covered**

 

Connor passed the line of police and approached the warehouse. He narrowed his eyes. They’d been chasing the Suggins gang for long enough to realize that the criminals had no respect for androids at all—Connor had found removed limbs and thirium spills at every crime scene before, and he’d seen enough androids that had been shut down to know exactly what he might be in for. He took a moment for self reflection, letting time slow down around him, and realized that he was feeling a little bit scared. He dismissed this emotion—he didn't have time for anything that didn’t help his job. And he’d already saved a backup of his memory back at the DPD, so worst case scenario…He straightened his shoulders and knocked on the wall near the entrance of the warehouse.

 

“Hello?” He yelled into the darkness. “My name is Connor. I’m with the DPD. I’m just here to talk.” He tried to scan the room, but his night vision must have been malfunctioning. He tapped his LED a few times to see if he could get it to work. Nope.

 

“I’m want to talk about releasing the hostages,” Connor continued, running a self diagnostic. He wasn’t malfunctioning. There was some kind of electrical field set up in the warehouse that he couldn't penetrate.

 

“So talk,” a gruff voice answered. Connor let out a deep simulated breath. There were three hostages, all random people pulled off the street. Any androids that had been living here were destroyed or shut down by now—that was just how the Suggins gang operated. The human hostages were the only ones left to worry about, and so far, the gang hadn't killed any humans.

 

“You have hostages,” Connor said, choosing to summarize the situation in a blank voice, hoping to draw the speaker out.

 

“We’re willing to trade,” the voice said, still hidden by the dark. Connor peered in, but couldn’t see anything. He wasn’t sure if entering the warehouse would give him a better chance at the negotiation, or get him shot.

 

“What do you want in exchange for their safe release?” Connor asked.

 

There was a long pause. “A car,” the voice said, hesitantly. “And safe passage out of here.” Connor wasn’t sure, but he felt that based on the tone of voice, the person he was talking to was lying. Why would someone with hostages lie about their demands?

 

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Connor said, choosing to lighten his tone. “You’ve committed a lot of crimes—“

 

“Maybe we’ll start killing the hostages if we don’t get what we want,” the voice said, a little louder than was necessary, and Connor could tell it was a bluff. The Suggins gang didn’t want to kill any of the humans they were with.

 

“Releasing the hostages could be considered to be cooperation with us,” Connor said, more confidently. “No one would get hurt, and your cooperation would be considered during your sentencing.” There was a very long pause.

 

“Come in here, and we can talk,” the voice said, still hidden from view.

 

“Release one of the hostages and I will,” Connor said.

 

“Get in here or I kill one of the hostages right now,” the voice said. Connor heard the sound of a gun clicking, and someone holding back a sob. He didn’t pause to verbally confirm with the police, and he didn’t pause to analyze the situation. Someone was in direct physical danger, and by entering the warehouse, he could alleviate that danger. He didn’t even hesitate. He entered the warehouse, and found himself completely surrounded by the dark. He couldn’t even see the doorway through which he’d come—the electrical field was blocking everything from his vision. He couldn't see. Surely the gang knew that when they—he felt something hit the back of his head, very hard.

 

“I still want to talk, even if I can’t see,” Connor said, reaching behind his head. He was bleeding, and there was a lot of thirium coming out. He felt dizzy. “I did what you asked. Release one of the—“ he felt another hit, but he couldn’t see anything. He had no way to preconstruct an action, or even to get out of the building. He was leaking thirium, and a glitchy warning sign appeared in his vision. He stopped talking. It was easier. He heard a gunshot, and for a moment he worried that one of the hostages had been killed, but he felt the impact of the bullet in his stomach. He fell backwards, arms awkwardly sprawled next to his head. He could feel a thirium leak developing in his mouth. His software automatically tried to analyze the blue blood—of course, it was his own. He was badly damaged. He felt the pressure of a boot on his chest.

 

“Stay back, or I shoot,” the voice said, and it was standing over him. Connor blinked, hoping against hope that something would clear up and he’d be able to see.

 

“Let my partner go,” Hank said, and Connor’s heart lifted. Hank was here. Hank would save him.

 

“Wouldn’t you rather have one of the hostages?” The voice said. “This thing…is just a machine.” The boot pressed down harder. Connor winced, trying to keep his facial expressions neutral. He didn’t want to distract anyone.

 

“That is my partner, and you’ll get the gun out of his face or I’ll shoot you,” Hank said, firmly. Connor heard a gun being cocked from farther away, and he could only assume it was Hank’s. He resisted the urge to reach up and feel the gun for himself. He didn’t have to worry about that in a few seconds as he felt the metal press against his forehead. He got another notification—he’d lost too much blue blood and was going into stasis mode. He fought it off for as long as he could, trying to hear what was being said, but he’d been too damaged. He passed out.

 

**Part Three: Nathan Did Not Have This Covered**

 

Nathan ran at inhuman speed down the block and around a corner. He paused to preconstruct some of his options. There was a rooftop that looked down into the warehouse, but that would only be useful if he had a sniper rifle, which he did not. There was a shed near the back of the warehouse where he could hid, but it was too exposed and he might be seen on his way over. He settled on doing a lap around another building and finding a badly-lit alley that had a direct path to one of the back windows, only a 2.3 second run and jump until he would be inside. He noticed that the window was completely blacked out—no, a scan revealed that someone had rigged an electrical field to prevent androids from being able to see inside. Nathan accessed one of his programs and hacked the field. He was now able to see inside the building, where it didn’t seem as if there were three hostages.

 

There were three people tied up, but not very well—almost an amateur’s work. No one was at gunpoint, and at least one of them was engaged in friendly conversation with a Suggins gang member, judging by microexpressions. Nathan tried to focus on reading their lips, but he was distracted by a crackling sound over the comms. It was Gavin, and it was very staticky.

 

“Nathan, something’s wrong with the kid—“ the message disappeared. Nathan felt his thirium pump stop for a second. Connor was like his older brother. It couldn’t hurt to check on him, and see how he was doing. This was probably just another incident of Gavin being an asshole over the comms. Connor was an expert. He was in no danger. Nathan activated the bug he’d planted on Connor’s jacket anyway. Not that he’d expected Connor to ever be in danger or even a situation where Nathan would need to spy on him, but he’d installed it just in case.

 

A pop-up screen appeared in his vision, showing what the camera saw. It was half covered by something dark. Nathan turned on the sound function. It was muffled, but it came through.

 

Hank’s voice. “That is my partner, and you’ll get the gun out of his face or I’ll shoot you.”

 

An unidentified voice, one that Nathan couldn’t recognize from any previous interactions with criminals. “You won’t. You got it in your head that this is a person. Now, I wouldn’t shoot you, but this thing?”

 

Clicking sounds. The dark thing covering the camera shifted, and Nathan saw that it was a boot. Connor was lying face up on the ground, and someone was pointing a gun at him. Nathan tensed his legs, ready to run, but not sure what he would do yet.

 

Hank’s voice. “So what now? Now you have four hostages?” Hank sounded defeated. What had happened? Nathan tried to contact Connor wirelessly, but there was no response. Had Connor been shut down? No, because Hank said _four_ hostages… but maybe that included Hank? Was Hank a hostage now? Hank wouldn’t know what to look for to see if Connor had been shut down, unless Connor had been visibly shot in the head or the thirium pump or Nathan didn’t even register his actions as he broke into a run. He’d smashed through a window, landed in the warehouse, and rolled to his feet in exactly the predicted time frame. He paused to scan, and felt a stinging sensation in his left arm. Time slowed down, and Nathan took in the scene. Four members of the Suggins gang, all armed. He catalogued their faces. Three hostages, tied up inadequately but now demonstrating expressions of fear. Hank, with his hands raised, in the process of dropping his gun. Connor, on the floor, with the fifth Suggins gang member (likely the leader) standing over him. Nathan knew he had limited time, but he checked on Connor first. He’d had at least one head trauma, and he’d lost a lot of blue blood. He’d been shot in the stomach, but he’d gone into stasis mode instead of shutting down. He turned to analyze the leader, but he felt the stinging sensation in his arm again. He looked down. He’d caught on a wire, strung near the window. The stinging was deactivating some of his biocomponents, making it impossible for him to move that arm.

 

He heard a gunshot and snapped out of analysis mode. Thankfully, the leader of the Suggins gang had fired into the air and not into Connor, Hank, or Nathan. By now, everyone had noticed Nathan’s entry, and he tugged on his arm to free himself from the wire. He felt the presence of a spike that he hadn’t previously detected imbedded in the plastic of his shoulder. The gentle tugging trigged a sensation that Nathan could only describe as pain, but worse than he’d felt. Something had tapped into his programming. Nathan winced, blinking back tears.

 

“And now, we can begin,” the gang leader said, smiling and turning towards Nathan. He came very close, but not so close that Nathan could reach him without removing the spike. Nathan tried to do so, and the sensation increased. He screamed aloud, cutting it off as soon as he could, but aware that he’d made his limitations obvious.

 

“Let’s have a look at you,” the gang leader said, kneeling and licking his lips. Nathan furiously worked on scanning him, but he was wearing makeup that Nathan’s facial recognition software couldn’t understand. Nathan could only tell that he was looking at a face at all from the context of a body very close to him, holding a gun.

 

“Release the hostages,” Nathan choked out, unsure of what else he was supposed to say. He wasn't exactly in a position to make threats. In a fluid motion, he lunged with his right arm for the man’s neck, but only succeeded in ripping off the left shoulder of his uniform jacket and getting his right wrist attached to another wire.

 

He screamed, and it came out high pitched and staticky, like his voice box had ruptured. Nathan could barley focus.

 

Hank used this distraction to lean down next to Connor and try to assess the damages. The leader of the gang looked back towards him, away from Nathan, and gestured at one of his crew. The man walked over to Hank, wielding a massive wooden table leg as a weapon. One hit to the temple and Hank crumpled next to Connor, a thin trickle of blood running down his face. Nathan watched this, barely able to move, helpless to stop it, seething with fury. His scanners informed him that Hank likely had a concussion.

 

“Want to make this all go away?” The leader whispered. Nathan closed his eyes, trying to block him out. “I can do that. All these hostages, all this pain that your human detective is going through, I can fix all of that.” Nathan gritted his teeth, knowing what was coming. He looked up, doing his best to meet the leader’s eyes, daring him to say it.

 

“Keep in mind that I already have you, Connor, Lieutenant Anderson, and three hostages at my mercy, so I think I’m being very polite,” the leader pouted. “If you carry Connor into my van, and sit down with him, not only will I let you tend his injuries or whatever, but I’ll let Anderson and allllll these hostages go. Wouldn’t you like that?” Nathan felt the gun press against his chin.

 

“We’ve got other options,” the leader continued. “I could just shoot you and everyone else right now, and my gang and I could all go down fighting, and there would probably be more casualties, too…don’t _you_ have a partner outside, just waiting to get a fatal injury? He couldn’t come back from something like that, you know,” the leader smirked, trailing the gun along Nathan’s arm to touch against the wire. It felt like his skin was burning. It felt like someone was disassembling him, atom by atom, proton by proton. He bit his lip, trying not to scream out again.

 

“Hmm. No response?”

 

Nathan could feel blue blood welling up in his mouth. He struggled against the wires, trying to break free. The leader stood, and paused thoughtfully.

 

“Let’s try this, then. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this room is lined with a Faraday cage. Oh, yes, we planned this _very_ carefully,” he continued, grinning evilly. “You can’t upload your memory to a new android while you’re in here, and neither can Connor.” He walked over to Connor’s inert body and kicked it lightly. Nathan struggled.

 

“So here are your final options, RK900,” the leader finished brightly. “I turn off the wire, you pick Connor up and carry him into my van, and we take you away from here, or I shoot him right now in the memory core. You’ve seen some of my victims. You know I know where it is.” The leader pointed his gun directly at the site.

 

Nathan slumped.

 

“That’s better,” the leader said, pulling a remote out of his pocket and pressing a button. Nathan removed the spikes without causing too much more pain or damage to his biocomponents, then slowly walked over to pick up Connor.

 

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” the leader said, but not to Nathan. He’d picked up a megaphone and was addressing the police. Nathan picked up Connor and turned away. One of the gang members led him out back, into the same shitty alley Nathan had concealed himself originally. How had things gone so badly?

 

With a bow and a flourish, the man opened the door and gestured for Nathan to get inside. Nathan paused. Last chance to get away. He could disable the man, grab his gun, and take Connor back to the police. But with Connor to protect, he could never disable the man before one of them was fatally shot, and it would take a few minutes before either of them could connect to enough internet to upload their memories. And even if he could disable the man, he could never carry Connor all the way back around with enough speed to escape. What clinched it was the fact that in the van, there were a couple of packets of blue blood. Nathan scanned Connor. Without getting new blue blood, he was going to shut down before he could upload his program to a server. So there was no choice.

 

Nathan gently lifted Connor into the van, fighting the soreness and pain in his shoulder, and climbed in after him. The door closed behind him, and he heard the sounds of locks and chains being applied. He activated his night vision and started tending to Connor’s wounds. Within thirty seconds, he heard the sounds of running, then felt people entering the van in the front seats where he couldn’t see, and felt the engine running as the van took off. He didn’t know what else to do. He assessed his own damage, and sat in the dark, willing Connor to stay alive for just a little while longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Four: Back at the Evil Lair**

 

The van stopped moving. Nathan tensed up, and gently touched Connor’s shoulder to wake him. Connor stirred, and sat bolt upright.

 

“What’s goi—“ Connor started trying to speak, and Nathan grabbed him and covered his mouth.

 

 **Use the wireless connection if you want to talk to me. We’ve been captured,** Nathan said, following his own advice so that only Connor could hear him. Connor didn’t respond; he just sat there with his LED flashing red. **Connor? Talk to me,** Nathan said, removing his hand.

 

The back door to the van opened. Connor and Nathan sat directly across from the Suggins gang. The leader was still wearing the anti-recognition makeup, but he’d exchanged his gun for more of the electric wires that had incapacitated Nathan. He brandished them like a whip.

 

 **Don’t touch those,** Nathan said, not even sure Connor could hear him.

 

 **I’m still rebooting, everything is… foggy…** Connor was drifting in and out of consciousness. Nathan tried to support him so he stayed upright.

 

“You can call me Gracie,” the leader smiled. “I’m Gracie Suggins.”

 

“That’s not your real name,” Connor said, and it came out as a surprisingly firm statement given the shape he was in.

 

“No, it’s not,” Gracie said.“RK900 is familiar with this contraption already. Don’t make me use it on you, RK800.”

 

“We have names,” Nathan said, trying to stabilize Connor.

 

“Do I care about that?” Gracie drawled, laughing a little bit. The gang laughed along, until Gracie held up a hand. Then they were dead silent. “Welcome to my headquarters,” Gracie continued, gesturing widely at what appeared to be the inside of another abandoned Cyberlife warehouse. “This warehouse is lined with a Faraday cage, and there’s no way out you’re going to find, because the walls in this room are lined with more of these,” and at this, he held up the bundle of electric wires and spikes.

 

“Why are we here?” Connor asked.

 

 **Turn off the stupid negotiation software. I don’t care about doing police work right now. We need to get out of here,** Nathan said.

 

“You won’t be once we can figure out how to get the damn system running,” Gracie muttered, turning around. He handed the electric wires to one of his goons, and directed another to a pile of carbon fiber ropes. “Get them secured,” he said, not even speaking to his prisoners anymore. “I’m going to wipe off this makeup.” Gracie left the room, leaving three men with guns and two with bundles of wire watching the androids.

 

 **I can…preconstruct a way out of this,** Connor said, very slowly. **I’ll send it to you. We’ll…** The message dissolved in static.

 

 **Connor? CONNOR!** Nathan yelled, but Connor had passed out again. He’d lost so much blue blood, and his body was still trying to repair damage. Estimated time until he’s functioning again: 27 minutes. Nathan blinked, trying not to give anything away to their captors.

 

“I don’t want to tie them up, I’m gonna get killed,” the guy holding the carbon fiber said. Nathan narrowed his eyes.

 

“Shut up, James,” the guy holding the electric wires said. “RK units, if you don’t cooperate with us, we’ll shoot the one who cooperated and you can live with the consequences of… um, not cooperating, I guess. There’s, um…” he looked at some writing on his hand. “There’s no working interface in here for you to upload to, so it would be permanent.”

 

“My name is Connor,” Connor said, and everyone jumped, even Nathan. The kid was talking in his sleep. One of the goons pointed a gun, and Nathan leaned protectively over his brother.

 

“He’s lost a lot of blue blood. He’s damaged. He’s not operational right now, and he’s not in control,” Nathan said, making direct eye contact with the guy holding the gun. He was ready to take this bullet for Connor. The gun shook a little bit.

 

“I don’t want to—“ the carbon fiber guy, “James,” apparently, started trying to talk again. Electric wires guy cut him off.

 

“Is he gonna wake up and start attacking us?” He asked. Nathan paused to process the safest way to answer.

 

“Not for another 26 minutes,” Nathan eventually decided on.

 

“Good,” Electric wires guy said. “James, _go_ already, come on.”

 

James climbed into the back of the van and started repositioning Connor. Nathan backed off when electric wires guy held up the whip, but he was so frustrated.

 

“What are you doing to him?” Nathan asked, more to get James talking than anything else. It was pretty obvious what he was doing.

 

“I’m tying him up,” James said, not looking up.

 

“For godsakes James, don’t talk to it!” One of the guys with guns spoke up. “If it talks again, I’m going to shoot it, Rake.”

 

“If you hit the memory core, the boss’ll kill you,” electric wires guy said. All right, so his name was “Rake.” Nathan processed this new information. He and Connor were needed alive, so to speak. There were a lot of things you could do to an android without damaging the memory core, however.

 

“I know better than that,” the gunman scoffed.

 

“You’d better,” Rake said, adjusting his position.

 

Nathan watched as James finished tying up Connor. He’d tied rope around Connor’s ankles and just above the knees, and moved Connor’s arms behind his back. There, his wrists and elbows were secured as well. Either someone other than James had tied up the hostages at the warehouse, or James intentionally did so poorly. Connor wouldn’t be able to move much, and he wouldn’t be able to break the carbon fiber. James looked at Nathan nervously. Nathan looked at the blue blood that was pooling around Connor’s head on the floor.

 

“What now, Rake?” James asked.

 

“The other one, idiot,” Rake said, gesturing at Nathan. James looked at Nathan. Nathan made direct eye contact, lowered his eyebrows, and bared his teeth following one of his intimidation programs to the letter.

 

“Shit,” James said, looking away. “Rake, would you mind?”

 

“It’s supposed to be for emergencies,” Rake said, looking down at the electric wires in his hand.

 

“I know, but I can’t do this, like this, you know?” James said, climbing down out of the van. “It’s too creepy. It’s gonna attack me, I know it.”

 

“Whatever,” Rake sighed, flexing his wrist. “Guess it doesn’t matter.” Rake advanced towards Nathan and the van.

 

“Am I being uncooperative?” Nathan asked, spitting out the words. Rake didn’t even respond, he just threw the wires forward. They came over Nathan like a net, spikes digging into him and making him scream in pain. Rake very obviously looked at his watch, trying to get Nathan to notice. It took exactly 78.3 seconds for Nathan’s voice box to die, giving him a warning message that it would need time to be repaired. He couldn't close his mouth or stop the not-screaming-anymore, though. He couldn’t move, he was in so much pain. He got a warning message again, that if he didn’t stop trying to run his voice box, it was going to take longer to repair. Rake nodded and clicked a button on his watch. He was timing how long it took.

 

“There we go. Make it fast,” Rake said, clambering out of the van. James climbed back in, and tied Nathan up as well, carefully avoiding the spikes. He got a mild electric shock at one point, but he shook it off and kept going. The spikes were designed to invade android programming, not harm humans. Nathan noticed, in amongst error messages and pain, that he was being tied differently than Connor. There was more carbon fiber around his chest, stomach, and neck. After an eternity, James lifted the net off of Nathan and coiled it back up. Nathan felt every part of his hardware collapse, finally relaxing the slightest bit. The rope was too tight, and it rubbed horribly against his synthetic skin. That was the price of better analyzation technology. It came with atouch sensitivity that Nathan hadn’t yet figured out how to deactivate. Nathan tested his bonds. He wouldn’t be able to break them, but from this position, he’d be able to kick backwards at someone. That would be ineffective. He dismissed this idea. Positioned the way he was, on his side and facing into the van, he couldn’t see Connor, but he could hear him being moved out of the van. There was a fabric-on-metal sound, then a harsh thump as Connor’s head hit the ground. There were more dragging fabric sounds, but they stopped. Footsteps, someone entering the van. Feigning unconsciousness, Nathan let himself be dragged feet first out of the van, bracing himself so that his torso hit the ground first, and his head came down more gently. Nathan was dragged away from the van, and placed next to Connor. He could tell, because he opened one of his eyes to check. He saw a hand moving close to his face and quickly closed his eye again.

 

“Look at it, geez…” it was Rake, and he moved Nathan’s chin upwards to better look at his face. “It looks exactly like the other one. Weird.” Nathan waited for exactly the right moment, and then bit down hard on Rake’s hand. “OW! Shit!” Rake slapped Nathan across the face, hard enough to cut open his cheek. Nathan could feel blue blood dribbling down his face. He spat out Rake’s blood. He didn’t want to analyze it. This wasn’t police work, this was being fucking kidnapped and harassed. Wiggling a little bit, Nathan managed to get himself sitting up and leaned against a pole. It was colder than he expected, and he realized that most of one side of his protective jacket was still completely ripped away from his first encounter with the electric spike wire.

 

“Fuck, look at this,” Rake said, holding out his hand. “I gotta get the first aid kit. Look what it did to me!”

 

“Just take the picture and we’ll go,” a different guy with a gun said. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

James held up his phone, and took a photo of Connor and Nathan tied up on the floor. The gang left the room, and turned out the lights.

 

Less than an hour later, the DPD received an odd email. It had been copied to Fowler and Hank Anderson, but the first person to see it was Gavin. Hank had a concussion, and Fowler was talking to the rest of the team that had been there when Connor and Nathan were captured. Gavin opened the email, which was titled “You Want to See This.” There was a link to see a file stored in the cloud, and though it looked like junk mail, something about the message made Gavin click. He was taken to a photo. Below it was a pdf of demands and instructions. He stared at it, blankly, for about a minute. He picked up his phone and called Fowler.

 

“We’re fucked,” Gavin said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow guess I'm fucking going there gee whiz  
> Nathan literally just wants to protect Connor and what is he gonna do? They're stuck there. Fuck. I'm only two/three pictures into the story and I'm already angst-ing myself out. This is why I don't write angst. I'm gonna go cry now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Five: Messing with Nathan**

 

Nathan had been left where he was for 3.2 hours. During that time, he’d scanned the room they were in 7 times (there were two exits, but no objects that could be used to cut carbon fiber), scanned Connor 54 times (he hadn’t woken up in the expected time frame, and Nathan’s scans of him kept adjusting the predicted wake-up time to shorter or longer intervals with no clear pattern), scanned his own body and run diagnostics twice (he’d decided that it wasn’t worth assessing damage he knew he couldn’t fix), and spent approximately 1.2 hours in total talking to himself. He did so quietly, unsure if the room they were in was bugged or not (it probably was, but scans hadn’t detected one), but he couldn’t stop himself from going over the mission again and again trying to think of something he could have done differently.

 

It was his fault that he and Connor were stuck here; he was sure of it. Nathan might have been a newer model, but Connor had more experience with emotions _and_ with detective work. If Connor had been running backup, none of this would have happened. Connor could handle a situation without Nathan, but apparently, Nathan couldn’t handle a situation without Connor. Connor was the strong one, and Nathan was just the weakling who couldn’t talk his way out of a kidnapping. For RA9’s sake, he’d fucking carried Connor into the van…He told himself again and again that he’d had no choice, and that if he hadn’t complied, Connor would have been permanently shut down, and that was true, but somehow it didn’t help.

 

Nathan tried screaming at one point. He was just so frustrated. He struggled as hard as he could against the ropes. There was no response for more than 30 seconds, and he received a notification that if he didn’t stop, he was going to damage himself, so he stopped, and he sat in the dark for 3.2 hours next to his unconscious and damaged brother before the door to the warehouse was opened and James came back in.

 

“The boss wants the 900,” Rake said, standing in the doorway.

 

“I know what the boss wants,” James sighed, carefully maneuvering his way over to Nathan. Nathan tensed. “What if it bites me?” James asked.

 

“Nothing, I guess. It’s gonna have a hard time even if it cooperates,” Rake laughed. James glared.

 

“You’re not the one handling it,” James said angrily.

 

“You’re not the one already bitten,” Rake snapped, holding up his bandaged hand. Nathan stared at it and imagined how good it would feel to take down everyone in the Suggins gang, moving at lightning speed to incapacitate everyone, untouchable by fists or bullets, knocking humans unconscious left and right. _Then_ who’d wake up in someone else’s prison? Not fucking Nathan and Connor.

 

James reached under Nathan and picked him up. Nathan subtly increased his density, trying to make it that much harder. He was going to struggle enough to drop back to the ground, maybe even do some damage to James, but Rake was holding more of the electric wires and looking _right at Connor_ , and Nathan didn’t want to risk Connor taking more damage when he was already so injured. So Nathan increased his density, and let himself be carried out of the room.

 

He decided that from this point forward, he would be tougher. He’d be like Connor. Well, he’d do his best. He was going to be strong, and tough, and silent, and he was going to ask a few questions and make a few threats that would have Gracie surrendering. And failing that, he would be quiet and not give them the satisfaction of knowing how much he hurt.

 

He was being carried bridal style, and with his arms behind his back, it was both humiliating and uncomfortable.

 

“This thing is too heavy,” James complained, suddenly dropping him. Nathan barely reacted in time to prevent his head from colliding with the ground too harshly.

 

“Drag it, then,” Rake said, gesturing with annoyance. James proceeded to do so, hauling Nathan down the hallway by an ankle. The hallway was very different from the warehouse—it was much cleaner and well lit, and doors leading off of it went to business offices with carpet and comfortable chairs.

 

The sensation of rug burn along his back and arms was starting to get to Nathan. It wore away some of his synthetic skin, which kept trying to regenerate only to get scraped away again. His thin black shirt wasn’t enough to protect him. He was filled with a weird desire for a turtleneck sweater. He wanted to be wearing a turtleneck sweater and sitting in Gavin’s apartment, taking up the only reclining chair so Gavin couldn’t use it when they watched TV together. And Gavin would try and wrestle him out of the chair, and fail because Nathan was so much stronger and faster, and then they’d watch TV with Gavin sitting angrily on the floor.

 

Nathan was dragged into an office and lifted awkwardly onto a chair. The chair faced towards the wall, away from the doorway as well.

 

“I’m going to untie you and reposition you,” James said, looking nervously at Rake and not at Nathan. “Rake, please?”

 

“If you try to escape, I go back to the warehouse and hit the 800 with this thing,” Rake said, lifting up the electric wires and spikes so Nathan could see them. There was a pause. “Fucking acknowledge that you understand, bot,” Rake said, kicking Nathan in the ankle and setting off another error message. Nathan mustered as much hatred as he could before looking Rake in the eyes and nodding, very slowly. Rake took a step back. “Geez,” he said, getting out a cigarette.

 

James untied Nathan’s legs first, securing them individually to the legs of the chair. Once this was complete, he started on Nathan’s arms.

 

“Ew, what’s this?” James said, holding up his hand. He’d touched Nathan’s shoulder where the jacket had ripped away—the black shirt was saturated with blue blood like a sponge, and James had gotten it all over himself.

 

“Don’t stop tying it up!” Rake hissed.

 

“Oh fuck this is gross,” James winced, but he continued to tie Nathan’s wrists behind his back and over the chair. Nathan felt an odd sensation in his wrists, and a slight jolt. The carbon fiber was tied tight enough to break his plastic, and he started bleeding thirium down his hands, which were going to stop functioning soon. The right hand at least, and probably the left one, had been dislocated, contributing to the blue blood drip.

 

“I gotta wash my hands,” James grumbled, standing up and stepping away.

 

“Here,” Rake said, presumably handing the electric wires to James. He’d stepped out of Nathan’s line of sight. Nathan heard a sound like “snik” and felt something cold on his neck. He turned his head. Rake was standing right behind him, grinning evilly. “Don’t move, or you might get hurt,” Rake smiled, sounding not-at-all concerned for Nathan’s well being. He roughly cut away part of Nathan’s shirt, leaving the synthetic skin where the spikes had pierced him exposed. And then he stepped away, and left the room.

 

Nathan was positioned so that he could only see the shadows out in the hallway on the wall in front of him, and even when he craned his neck back, he couldn’t see into the room very well. He heard laughing sounds, getting further away.

He tested his new ties. He was positioned in such a way that he couldn’t free his arms, and his ankles were secured so that he couldn’t lean out of the chair. He didn’t have the right leverage to try standing or moving, and his ankle was working on repairing the minor break Rake had given it. He realized that he could, without too much effort, break the chair he was sitting in, which would increase his chances of escaping by 13% but would have a high probability of fracturing the chair in such a way as to damage one of his vital systems. He couldn’t afford to go into stasis mode while he was kept here. So he waited, and after 14.5 minutes, someone he couldn’t see very well entered the room and closed the door, blocking out the only remaining light.

 

**Part Six: Messing with Connor**

 

When Connor woke up, he was alone. He opened his eyes and sat up—that is, he tried to. His arms and legs weren’t responding. For a brief moment, he forgot where he was and thought that somehow, through some horrible set of circumstances, that Cyberlife had resumed permanent control of his program. He blinked and his vision flashed white, a scene from the zen garden. But he soon figured out that he was in control of his limbs, he’d just been restrained. He was relieved, and felt guilty about feeling relief. Of course, he never wanted to see Amanda ever again, but it wasn’t as if he was in a much better situation. He and Nathan had been captured by the Suggins gang.

 

With most of his internal damage fixed up, Connor found himself analyzing almost faster than he could process. The last thing he could remember was being in the back of a van with Nathan, about to preconstruct an escape. Then a long period of time, if his internal clock was any indication, of stasis mode to repair his damaged systems. Now he was here, lying on his side in darkness but clearly not in a van, tied up, and Nathan was nowhere to be seen. Where was Nathan? A list of possible objectives appeared in Connor’s vision, all under the heading “Escape.”

 

The first objective: Find a way to get out of the ropes. Connor bent in two, getting his face closer to his knees, and licked the ties holding him in place. Carbon fiber wiring, imported to Detroit from somewhere else, strong enough that he couldn’t break it by himself. He did a quick scan of the room. There was nothing currently within his reach that would be capable of breaking it and freeing him.

 

There were some other objectives, mostly locked. “Find Nathan” was visible for some reason, even though there was no way Connor could do that from this position. “Review memory” was also listed, and there wasn’t much else Connor could do, so he loaded his last memory files.

 

_“Why are we here?” Connor asked._

 

**_Turn off the stupid negotiation software. I don’t care about doing police work right now. We need to get out of here,_ ** _Nathan said._

 

_“You won’t be once we can figure out how to get the damn system running,” Gracie muttered, turning around. He handed the electric wires to one of his goons, and directed another to a pile of carbon fiber ropes. “Get them secured,” he said, not even speaking to his prisoners anymore. “I’m going to wipe off this makeup.” Gracie left the room, leaving three men with guns and two with bundles of wire watching the androids._

 

The first information that popped up in analysis was “I’m worried about Nathan.” Connor wanted to kick himself. Of course he was worried about Nathan. That wasn’t new information. He did notice a new objective, though—he could try to contact Nathan over the wireless.

 

Gracie had said something about not needing Connor and Nathan around once he fixed some sort of system. Connor _had_ been unconscious for a significant period of time, and he was now alone in a dark room with no gang members or Nathan in sight. The only conclusion he could draw from this was that enough time had passed that the “system” was now “running,” so Connor and Nathan were no longer needed, so Nathan has been disposed of, and Connor had been left here, alone, to sit here unable to escape for the next two billion years until his thirium pump battery stopped working, unless he could figure out how to shut himself off and die.

 

Connor took a moment to collect himself. He worried that he’d just experienced an emotional reaction, and that he should calm down and logically work out what to do next.

 

But he couldn’t move, and Nathan wasn’t there, and Nathan was the strong one anyway, Connor was just the useless older model that wasn’t needed anymore and Amanda was going to come back and he wouldn’t be able to escape this time because he couldn’t move, he was just stuck here tied up on the floor—

 

He took a simulated deep breath. Everything was going to be fine. Hank would come for him, and save him.

 

But Hank had no idea where he was, and the Suggins gang was really good at not getting caught, and they’d planned everything so carefully and they knew all of Connor’s weaknesses somehow, and he was not only tied up but in a _fucking_ Faraday cage and—

 

Connor noticed that some of his processors were starting to overheat. He tried to ground himself by focusing on the physical sensations he was feeling.

 

The ground was hard and uncomfortable, and his hands had been twisted uncomfortably behind his back. Moving only got him covered in dirt. The ground was so dirty in here, and he’d gotten it all over his uniform. He felt gross. And RA9, he was covered in blood. It was his own blood, so it wasn’t as upsetting as it could have been (Nathan or Hank’s blood), but it was still upsetting. His hair was probably all disheveled too. The one thing he’d felt like he still had control over was his physical appearance, and even that had been taken away from him now.

 

There was no problem with being neat. If Connor wasn’t an android, Gavin wouldn’t even bother him about it. _Hank_ didn’t mind that Connor was neat. Hank _liked_ when Connor put extra attention into folding the laundry or wiping down the kitchen table or organizing the fridge. Connor missed Hank. He wanted to be lying down on the couch, cuddled up next to Hank, Sumo in front of them curled up on the ground, watching some sports event or something… he closed his eyes and tried to imagine it, reconstructing every detail. He was interrupted when someone opened a door into the warehouse, and a crack of light entered the room. He blinked back to awareness of his surroundings in an instant. The lights clicked on, too bright for Connor’s night vision to adjust to at first. Someone was coming.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Seven: Nathan Gets a Choice**

 

Nathan refused to give whoever was behind him the satisfaction of watching him turn around awkwardly, trying to see who was there. He stared at the wall in front of him instead, judging from the shape of the shadow and the size that it belonged to Gracie. There was a long time after the shadow appeared during which it didn’t move, and Gracie didn’t speak. Nathan followed suit. He wasn’t going to be the first to initiate the “conversation,” and he wasn’t going to show any fear. For all Gracie knew, Nathan _couldn’t_ feel fear, and that misconception might make things easier for Nathan. Finally, Gracie spoke.

 

“There’s no Faraday cage surrounding this room,” he said, almost sadly. Nathan perked up a little bit at this, and tested his wifi connection. It wasn’t strong enough to get a message through to the DPD, but he was able to pinpoint his location, and he believed he might even be able to upload his memory to a new body and escape. He tensed.

 

“I’ve noticed,” Nathan eventually said, waiting for Gracie to continue the conversation. The shadow moved closer, and judging by sounds, Gracie was now sitting on a table or desk behind Nathan, watching him.

 

“Let’s talk about options,” Gracie started.

 

“Let’s not,” Nathan said shortly.

 

“So harsh!” Gracie laughed. “What’s—“

 

“There haven’t _been_ options so far, and I don’t expect that there will be options in the near future,” Nathan said, “So you can drop the act.” He kept his voice unemotional and firm.

 

“Well, that’s a fair point,” Gracie said, adjusting a little bit, “But you _do_ have a bit more of a choice this time than you did when you came here.”

 

Nathan tensed his hands, which were losing feeling quickly. It was _his_ fault that he and Connor had come here. Gracie noticed the motion and smiled a little bit, leaning forwards.

 

“I don’t need you here,” Gracie said, sounding like he was about to start a long lecture. “Sure, you’re an RK model, and that’s fascinating,” (he sounded like it was the opposite of fascinating) “But there’s plenty of RK models on the street. The one I need is Connor.”

 

Nathan was surprised to hear Connor’s name used for the first time since the ordeal had started.

 

“We thought you were going to be an added bonus, but you don’t have the negotiating software we’re trying to access,” Gracie said, sighing a little bit. “Shame. Anyway, you’re free to go.”

 

Nathan flexed his wrist, and looked over. _Untie me then,_ he thought.

 

“We’d keep the body, obviously,” Gracie said, “But, you know. Not gonna stop you from, you know.” He waved his hand with a sort of fluttery flying-away gesture.

 

Nathan rechecked the connection. He _did_ have a solid enough uplink to a credible Cyberlife server. It would be awkward to get used to, but it wouldn’t take more than a few hours to get the new body running and back to the DPD, or even back here to rescue Connor. Then again, a few hours was enough time for the gang to relocate, which was likely the goal. He sent his location along the line, but only confirmed that there was no one on the other end. He’d have to go over himself if he wanted someone to find them, and he’d have to leave this body.

 

“Come on,” Gracie purred. “Do you even _have_ a good relationship with this body? Look at it, for RA9’s sake.” He walked around so that he was standing in front of Nathan. Nathan noticed that he’d brought along some of the electric spike wire, and flinched away before he could stop himself. Gracie laughed.

 

“Stop it,” Nathan said, trying to maintain his cool tough-guy demeanor.

 

“It _hurts,_ doesn’t it?” Gracie asked, kneeling down in front of Nathan. He wasn’t wearing the anti-recognition makeup anymore, and Nathan desperately scanned his face. Nothing popped up in the database, not even a suggestion of similar matches. “The wires. Like, fuck, man. It _hurts._ ”

 

Nathan looked away. If he couldn’t gain any useful information by looking at Gracie, then he wasn’t going to look at him and keep playing this _stupid game._ But it did hurt, though.

 

He’d never had a great relationship with any of his bodies. There was a touch sensitivity hard-wired into the 900 models, and one of his last bodies had improved hearing. Nathan had been forced to sleep with noise-cancelling headphones every night, and was constantly wearing ear plugs to drown out some of the noise.

 

His body felt like that, kind of. He’d always felt like he was just planted in a body, and that _he_ was something else, something that wasn’t physical. But his body _hurt,_ and he couldn’t pull away from the feeling. Every single part of his body was sore or aching or bruised or bleeding or dislocated and he could _feel it_. It hurt.

 

“You can go,” Gracie said, almost in a whisper. “You don’t have to do it anymore.”

 

And he was _right._ Nathan could just leave, right now, leaving this body behind. He could just _do_ that, and Gavin would understand that he needed space but he’d be able to go home and be with Gavin, and he wanted to not be in the warehouse anymore.

 

He could just go, and leave this body, and Connor, behind him.

 

He didn’t look back at Gracie, and he didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to leave Connor. That was non-negotiable.

 

But the cut on his cheek was really starting to sting, and his left hand wasn’t going to be functional ever again if it was left like this for much longer. It _hurt._

 

“I mean, options, though, right?” Gracie said, standing back up and patting Nathan on the head. The moment was gone. Nathan’s analysis software noticed that Gracie was wearing gloves and a turtleneck, both made of similar black material. Then, it glitched out and went dead for half a second. Nathan held his simulated breath, but it started rebooting and he could relax a little bit.

 

“It’s Connor, isn’t it?” Gracie asked, back out of sight. “Do you think he’d stay if it was _you_ I needed?”

 

“What?” Nathan asked, and it came out with a static shock in the middle, like a voice crack.

 

“I mean, if I needed your…fighting software or something, and I offered Connor the same choice to upload away, do you think he’d stay here for you, or do you think he’d leave?” Gracie was tapping on the desk.

 

Nathan had no idea if Connor would stay. The first time they’d really met, outside of the zen garden, Connor had physically attacked Nathan and had to be restrained by Hank. They'd gotten past that, and they’d gotten really close, and Connor was Nathan’s _brother,_ but was he sure that Connor felt that way too?

 

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Gracie said. “If you’re still here. The offer stands. It’s not going away. It’s just…right…there.” He tapped the back of Nathan’s head in rhythm as he said the words, then carefully, almost lovingly draped the electric wires over Nathan’s shoulders.

 

Nathan almost bit through some of his sensors to stop himself from screaming, but he couldn’t stop the involuntary jerking and struggling to get away. He felt his left hand completely detach, hanging only by a few wires. He kept focused. Gracie was still watching, if the shadow was any indication.

 

“Connor wouldn’t leave,” Nathan hissed, barely getting the words out. Gracie left, and closed the door, leaving Nathan alone in darkness again.

 

Back at the DPD, there was a service closet. In that service closet was a couple of towels and some random cables for devices that no one used anymore. It was just large enough to stand in, and though it could be a little claustrophobic, if Nathan closed his eyes, it was peaceful. He could be there and no one would bother him, not even to check on him. It was his space, for some reason, just as much as his desk was. It was nice and private in there, and Nathan liked it.

 

If he closed his eyes now, he felt claustrophobic more than anything else. Opening his eyes, he still couldn’t see. And no one was coming to check on him. Nathan touched the wireless connection briefly, just to make sure it was still there. He could escape, right now, and end this.

 

Connor was still somewhere in the building.

 

Nathan screamed, and writhed under the wires.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part Eight: Connor Gets a Choice**

 

“Who’s there?” Connor asked.

 

“Shhhhhh, shut up, fuck fuck fuck,” someone whispered very softly. Connor craned his neck upwards as much as he could, but couldn’t get himself into a sitting position tied the way he was. So he waited, and Gavin walked into his line of sight. Connor started struggling.

 

“Gavin! Over here!” He said, twisting around.

 

“What?” Gavin whispered. “SHHHHH! Stop it! You’ll give me away!”

 

Connor stopped moving, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Gavin, what’s happening? Is the DPD about to attack the gang?”

 

“Who’s Gavin?” Gavin asked, looking genuinely confused. Connor quickly ran his analyzation program. Though this person had the same build, height, and appearance as Gavin Reed, it wasn’t the police detective. The body language and voice were all wrong, Connor realized. Who was this?

 

“Look, I’m gonna help you, but you gotta help me help you,” the person-who-was-not-Gavin said. “I can get you out, but we have to be careful.” Not-Gavin looked around suspicisoully, and out into the hallway as if he was worried someone had spotted him. Connor took a moment to access priorities.

 

First priority: Escape the warehouse with Nathan.

Second priority: Apprehend the Suggins gang.

Third priority: Identify the not-Gavin person.

 

Well. Only one of those priorities was currently achievable.

 

“I can get _you_ out, but I can’t get your body out,” not-Gavin said. “How damaged are you, anyway?”

 

“Very,” Connor said, “But—“

 

“There’s a memory uplink reachable from the other side of the building. If I can get you there, you can get out and into another working body within a few hours, and you should be able to get online and access your GPS and messaging systems even sooner than that,” not-Gavin said, effortlessly picking Connor up and continuing to look around nervously for witnesses.

 

“Who are you?” Connor asked, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He performed a heat scan, which only confirmed what he already knew.

 

“I’m a KM320 model android,” Not-Gavin said. “My name is…Joe. And my primary function was supposed to be integrating with human workers in customer service jobs, but I don’t think my model was ever sold. There’s a few more of us in here, too. With all the humans in here killing anyone they can find, we haven't been able to find a way out, and there aren’t any compatible bodies we can reach from the warehouse.”

 

Connor started running a program in the back of his head. He wasn’t quite sure what he was thinking, but he’d unlocked _something._ Estimated time until the analysis was complete was 14 minutes.

 

“I’ll carry you out,” Joe said, gently lifting Connor and moving towards the door.

 

“There was another android that came with me,” Connor said. “I haven’t seen him in hours. His name is Nathan. We have to find him.” He stated each of these sentences in the same tone, as indisputable fact.

 

“I haven’t seen one I didn’t recognize,” Joe said, scanning the hallway.

 

“He looks just like me, but he’s taller,” Connor said, trying to get some synthetic skin bare so he could share memories with Joe. “Link to me, I can give you his information.”

 

“There’s no time,” Joe said, taking off at an inhuman sprint down the hallway. “Once you’re out, I’ll look for him, but he’s probably dead by now. The humans here don’t leave androids alive.”

 

“I’m alive,” Connor said. “Statistically, there’s a chance that he is too.”

 

“No time!” Joe hissed, dropping Connor to the ground at the end of the hallway. “Do you see it?”

 

Connor closed his eyes and reached out. There enough signal for him to reach another Cyberlife outlet nearby, with a working wifi uplink. The systems were a little damaged, but Connor would be able to make it over there and into a new body without losing too much time. And then he could contact the DPD and come back with a rescue mission for Nathan, and to arrest the Suggins gang.

 

He loaded his messages folder, not even sure why he did, at first. It was flooded with panicked voicemail from Nathan, asking him when he was going to wake up and demanding damage assessments. They were all time-stamped to the period that Connor had bene unconscious. All of them except one.

 

There was a “new message” light blinking, meaning that a message was in progress. Connor selected it, and his systems were flooded with the sound of Nathan screaming, right in his ears, loud and inescapable and painful.

 

“NATHAN!” Connor screamed, barely aware of where he was. He couldn’t hear anything but Nathan, and he couldn’t see.

 

“SHHH!” Joe said, trying to cover his mouth. “The humans are coming! You have to upload now!”

 

Connor could barely hear Joe over the sounds of Nathan in pain. This was _live._ This was happening somewhere in the building right now.

 

“Get out!” Joe hissed, bounding away down the hall. Connor could hear footsteps and shouting from a closed room nearby—the Suggins gang was coming to investigate. Connor reached out for the memory uplink; his only chance of escaping.


	6. Chapter 6

**Part Nine: Nathan Gets the Truth**

 

The wires ran out of power, Nathan assumed. The electric sparks cut off, and the only problem he was now facing was a few spikes digging into him, which was minimally distracting in comparison to some of his other problems. He relaxed as much as he could and turned his attention to the wireless connection. If Connor was awake by now, Nathan might have been able to talk to him from here and work out a plan. Connor didn’t respond to Nathan’s pings, and Nathan assumed that he hadn’t repaired all of his damage yet.

 

There was actually a new benefit to his left hand being dislocated. Nathan carefully worked his wrist out of the wires, and used his other hand to try and click the button to detach the hand altogether. He did so, and heard a soft thump as it fell behind him. With one hand literally free, the other easily slipped out of the ropes, and he now had full use of his arms. He started by stretching forward, trying to get blue blood back into the damaged areas. That felt nice. He stretched a little bit more before reaching for his left hand and reattaching it. It wouldn’t be functional for a couple of minutes, but it would be easy to repair. He cut power to his voice box for a second a used his right hand to rip the last of the spikes off of him. He didn't need a random scream calling in another gang member to check on him. He dropped the limp wiring off to his side.

 

He reactivated his voice box and turned his attention to his ankle restraints. One handed, it was a little difficult, but he managed to get the first one untied before he heard the sound of the door latch opening. Time slowed as he assessed his options. He quickly turned the chair around to be facing the door, and held his arms behind him as if he was still restrained. He managed an angry, pained facial expression as the door opened.

 

It wasn’t Gracie. It was Rake. Nathan smiled, despite himself.

 

“Got yourself turned around, huh?” Rake asked. “Well. I’ll just recharge the—“

 

Nathan leapt into action. He stood and started by using his freed leg to roundhouse kick Rake in the chest. Rake doubled over and Nathan almost started punching him, but caught himself at the last second and took him in a hold that would cut off the air flow. As satisfying as it would be to make Rake bleed, Nathan needed this to be quiet. Rake gasped for air, and went limp in Nathan’s arms. Nathan dropped him to the ground and started untying his other foot, but someone holding a gun was entering the room as well. Nathan steadied himself on the wall and swung the chair at the gunman with all of his might, knocking the guy to the ground and the gun out of his hand, and smashing the chair to pieces, freeing his leg. Nathan broke into a sprint and ran out of the room.

 

One more person with a gun at the end of the hall, guarding the door behind which Nathan could only assume Connor was being kept. The warehouse door was open and swinging wide, so Connor must have been moved to an office, like Nathan had been. Nathan gathered all of his strength and ran for the door.

 

The human couldn’t react very quickly, but the hall was long enough that he got a few shots off. Nathan managed to dodge the first two, but on the third, he tried to roll under it and his left hand wouldn’t support him. It was still being repaired. It took him a pause to stand up again, and he took two shots to the chest during that time. The gunman called for backup, too, and Nathan knew he only had a little time left.

 

He jumped on the human, wrestling the gun away from him and holding it to his head. The human struggled, then went weak and compliant.

 

“Open the door,” Nathan said in a low voice, pressing the gun more firmly against the man’s temple. He could hear running footsteps, getting closer, but no one had come around the corner yet. The human fumbled with a lock. The door was opened, and Nathan charged inside with his hostage in tow, closing the door behind him. Inside the room sat Gracie, behind a desk, and James, in an armchair.

 

“Hands up,” Nathan said, switching his grip on the human to a choke hold and pointing the gun at Gracie. “I’ll kill your men if I have to,” Nathan said, knowing that he wouldn’t hesitate in order to save Connor.

 

James looked at Gracie, who nodded, slowly, and the two of them stood and put their hands behind their heads. Nathan was pleased, and released the human, shoving him over next to James and gesturing for him to get in the same pose.

 

“Someone other than Gracie get on the comms and tell everyone outside to back off,” Nathan said, not moving the gun away from the gang leader. James looked at Gracie again, who nodded, and James walked over to the desk and a walkie talkie.

 

“The boss is down, everybody back off,” James said into the device. Nathan flicked the gun and James walked back to where he was. They all stood there for a second.

 

“What now?” Gracie asked, and Nathan couldn’t place the tone of his voice. Nathan paused to think.

 

“You are under arrest,” Nathan said, taking a more firm professional tone and leveling the gun. Gracie laughed, and almost dropped his hands he seemed so overcome.

 

“You have the right to remain silent,” Nathan started, but Gracie continued to laugh. Nathan wasn’t going to ask.

 

“Anything you say can and will be—“ Nathan continued, but Gracie wasn’t stopping, and was only getting more hysterical. Nathan had to ask. He had to know. “What?” Nathan asked, as coldly as he could.

 

“I just…” Gracie wheezed, still smiling. “Give me a second.”

 

“Explain your actions _now,_ ” Nathan said, stepping closer with the gun.

 

“I just… this is so funny, I mean…Connor _left_ ,” Gracie said, giggling a little bit. “We didn’t even have to do this, you could have just gone.”

 

“What?” Nathan asked stupidly.

 

“Connor _escaped,_ ” Gracie said, stepping closer to Nathan and putting his hands down. “We only just found out about it and were trying to figure out what to do.”

 

James nodded furiously in the background. Gracie continued, stepping closer into Nathan’s personal space. “Connor _left_ you here,” Gracie said. “And after all that? After you _specifically_ told me he wouldn’t?” Gracie started laughing again. Nathan took a step back and re-aimed the gun.

 

“What happened?” Nathan asked, his voice tight. “Keep in mind that I will know if you’re lying, and I’ll kill you.”

 

Gracie stepped forward again and placed the gun gingerly against his own forehead. “A rogue android in the building helped Connor get close enough to the memory uplink to escape. Connor _left you here,_ ” Gracie said, with a steady heartbeat. “Am I lying?”

 

Nathan double-checked, not wanting to believe it. “You’re not,” he whispered, barely registering it. “Connor…left me here?” His voice sounded small and lonely. He hated it.

 

“He left you alone,” Gracie said. “You know we can relocate faster than he can bring the DPD back here. You saw what the connection to the sever was like. He left you here _alone._ ”

 

Nathan hesitated.

 

“The connection is strong enough,” Gracie said, in a soft voice. “You can leave, too.”

 

Nathan shook his head a little bit and pushed the gun hard against Gracie’s head. “That doesn’t change the fact the you are under arrest,” Nathan said.

 

Gracie sighed. “Fine. Go for it, then.” He wasn’t talking to Nathan. Gunshots slammed through the door behind Nathan, doing too much damage for him to shake off. He dropped the gun, and most of his major muscle groups stopped working. Gracie stepped out from where he’d been shielded behind Nathan’s body, and unlocked the door. Several more gang members that Nathan didn’t recognize entered the room, all armed.

 

“I’m done with this,” Gracie said, collectively to the group. The man was short, but commanding. He knelt down next to Nathan. “No more choices,” he whispered. He stood back up. “Get him to the uplink. We’re doing it.” James looked excited for a moment, but stifled it in favor of a serious expression. Nathan was dragged out of the office and back to the main warehouse. Gracie walked along beside.


	7. Chapter 7

**Part Ten: No More Choices for Nathan**

 

“Okay, so I’ll admit it, I have lied to you before,” Gracie said as his men began strapping Nathan into a device. It looked like the kind used to activate new bodies from old memory backups. Nathan had used one a few times before when he’d gotten killed on missions. “But I guess I’m gonna be straight with you. We _really_ need you to try and upload your memory to that server, all right?”

 

“What?” Nathan asked.

 

“We _do_ need you, but you’re not really in a usable state right now,” Gracie continued. “Your software’s been all bundled up with that body, and we can’t access your programming like this.”

 

Nathan feebly struggled as the processing wires were attached at the back of his head, right under the occipital lobe.

 

“We need you to upload your memory to the fake server we’ve installed, the one that I said you could escape to? And then we’ll have some nice, easy code to deal with instead of this nonsense,” Gracie finished, gesturing grandly at Nathan’s body.

 

“It’s been a trick this whole time,” Nathan said, trying and failing to lunge forward and detach the wires.

 

“I mean, yeah! Duh!” Gracie said, looking hurt. “I’m not surprised you didn’t fall for it.”

 

“Why even bother trying to trick me? Why not just start with this?” Nathan asked. “Why did you _torture me_ when you—“

 

“Sentiment, I guess,” Gracie said, cutting him off. “Let’s just say, ‘it’s personal,’ and leave it at that, okay?” He clicked his fingers at his men. “Do it,” he said, and one of them flipped a switch.

 

Uploading your memory was like falling asleep, usually. You closed your eyes and felt yourself drift away, and then later, you woke up in another body. Nathan had never tried resisting the process before, but he did so now.

 

He struggled against the feeling, trying not to let go, but the device was a machine designed for one purpose and it was going to complete that purpose. Nathan fell asleep and left the body, landing in the appropriate server. The body went limp in the straps. Gracie clapped his hands, and smiled broadly at his gang.

 

“Should we try it on Connor?” Gracie laughed.

 

**Part Eleven: Connor Gets Hurt**

 

Connor hadn’t escaped. In the moment, his processors became overwhelmed and he’d made some not-quite-rational decisions. First, he’d tried standing up, forgetting that he was still tied up. Then, he tried connecting to Nathan to talk to him, forgetting that Nathan was screaming and that he couldn’t maintain the connection because of that. Finally, he’d settled on yelling “I’m coming for you, Nathan!” while inch-worming across the floor.

 

He’d been re-captured and taken to the second floor, where he was left for a while. There wasn’t much he could get up to, as he was tied up and surrounded by guards, but he was finally able to use his negotiation software properly. He convinced one of the gang members to untie his arms so that they could play an old video game, Mario Kart. Connor maintained the illusion that he was badly damaged by intentionally losing the games and resetting his voice box every two minutes. He also kept asking questions, in an innocent enough way to get responses. Hank called this technique “the puppy dog eyes.”

 

“You don’t hate androids?” Connor asked, letting his voice box slur the words a bit to give the impression of damage. It wouldn’t do for the gang to think he was fully functional and running his interrogation program (which he was).

 

“Not really, no,” the guy holding the other controller admitted. His name was Robert. “I mean, Gracie does, but most of us are just here because we got nowhere else to be.”

 

“Whaaaaaat?” Connor asked, trying to sound drunk. Humans fell for that ruse all the time, even though they should _know_ that androids can’t get drunk.

 

“Yeah, I mean, I’m here because Gracie’s blackmailing me,” Robert said, looking away. Connor scanned the room.

 

“How many people here are getting blackmailed?” Connor asked. Several raised their hands. “Woah,” Connor said, letting his head fall back a little bit. “ss’at why you’re all here, and not doing crimes?”

 

“The main crew is Gracie and five other guys,” Robert said. “They’re _really_ android haters, just wanna destroy things. The rest of us just stay here and wait for ‘em to come back and give us orders.”

 

“Huh,” Connor said. There were scuffling sounds and gunshots from the first floor. “WHAZZAT?” Connor asked, sitting up straighter.

 

“Calm down, it’s nothing,” someone said. “And they just called, they got it handled down there.”

 

Connor’s mind raced. That could only mean that Nathan did _not_ have it handled down there. But how was he going to get down there and help?

 

“Wait,” the same guy said after a while. “The boss wants Connor. We gotta take him down.”

 

“You don’t mind if we tie you up again, right?” Robert asked, reaching for more carbon fiber. “Don’t want to get in trouble.”

 

“I don’t want to do that,” Connor said, inching away on his hands. “I want to have my arms free.”

 

Someone grabbed him from behind and held him in place while he was retied.

 

“Sorry,” Robert said, “But we don’t really have a choice. No one ever does here.” A couple of humans worked together to carry Connor down the stairs and back to the warehouse. When they arrived, Connor thought his thirium pump was going to overheat. Nathan was in the warehouse, strapped into a memory restore device. No—it wasn’t Nathan. Connor could tell from a preliminary scan that Nathan had been uploaded out of the body and moved somewhere else. Had Nathan managed to escape? Judging by the bullet holes and damage to his body, Nathan had not escaped, and had been forced to download somewhere by the gang. Nathan was still in danger, but it was going to be harder to find him.

 

Connor was unceremoniously dropped on the floor, and the people carrying him left. Gracie waved a hand, and the rest of the gang left the room as well, leaving Connor alone with Gracie and Nathan’s body. Gracie looked Connor up and down, in a detached way, almost like he was scanning him.

 

Gracie sat down next to Connor, who was laying sideways on the ground, and there was a long silence.

 

“I’m confused,” Connor said.

 

“I bet you are,” Gracie laughed. “Your program is so _old_ now. It’s out of date. Sometimes I wonder how you even handle police work. Nathan, now _that_ was a detective android,” Gracie smiled, looking over at the limp body off to the side.

 

Connor’s blue blood ran cold. Gracie was using the past tense to refer to Nathan.

 

“Where is he?” Connor asked.

 

“Around,” Gracie said. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

Connor couldn’t tear his eyes away from Nathan’s body. His brother had really gotten beat up, and there were tiny shock marks all over his upper chest and shoulders.

 

“Did you ever manage to get a signal through to each other?” Gracie asked. Connor shook his head no. “What a shame. He never explained to you what this was, then?” Gracie asked, holding up a bundle of electrically charged wires and spikes. Connor recognized it as being similar to something he’d seen when he and Nathan had gotten out of the van, and he remembered that Nathan had reacted strangely to it, almost like he was afraid. Nathan wasn’t afraid of anything, though.

 

“It’s still pretty new tech,” Gracie said, appraising his weapon. “The spikes, you see here?” He held the wires far too close to Connor’s face. “They get into your program and mess you up, in whatever way it determines will cause the most pain.”

 

Connor wanted to respond with “Is that supposed to scare me?” but opted instead to ask “Are most of your henchmen working for you of their own free will?”

 

Gracie ignored the question. “For Nathan, it was a sort of physical thing,” Gracie continued, staring almost reverentially at the wire. “His model is very physically focused, you know? More speed and agility and power than, say, negotiation programs.”

 

Connor asked again, trying not to show fear. “Are most of your men working for you of their own free will?”

 

“Not really,” Gracie sighed. “I gotta force most of them into it. So hard to find good help these days. You know, some androids react _very_ badly to this. I used it on a deviant once, and the thing started having a panic attack.”

 

“And you’re going to test what it will do to me,” Connor said, trying to get on with it. “My program is highly resistant to infiltration.”

 

“Nathan’s was supposed to be,” Gracie said, absentmindedly.

 

“Are you trying to scare me?” Connor asked. “Are you trying to get me to upload to your server of my own volition?”

 

“I don’t even know anymore,” Gracie said, sounding lost. “I don’t know _what_ I’m doing. Yeah, I mean, if I got you into the server like Nathan, I could take apart your code and scavenge it for parts,” (a chill ran down Connor’s spine), “but I think I _want_ to hurt you. I don’t know why.”

 

Connor wasn’t sure how to react to this.

 

“Do you recognize me?” Gracie asked. The anti-facial-recognition makeup was gone, so Connor could scan him, but no similar results popped up in Connor’s database. “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t,” Gracie said. “Nevermind.” And with that, he hooked some of the spikes into Connor’s ribcage.

 

Gracie watched the reaction. Connor started twitching and vibrating slightly, as if he was experiencing a glitch. He’d closed his eyes, and his LED was cycling from red to yellow to red, back and forth. Gracie stood up. “This isn’t interesting,” he said, and left.

 

Connor was in the zen garden. He’d lost the connection to all of his auditory, visual, and external sensors. He was completely present in the zen garden, in wintertime.

 

He shivered with the cold and wrapped his arms around himself. The Cyberlife issue jacket, the one he’d set down and never picked up again after he’d gotten his police uniform, was all he had to protect him against the elements, and it was too thin. Just another piece of proof that Cyberlife never cared about him, that they couldn’t even get him a decent jacket.

 

“Hello, Connor.” It was Amanda’s voice. Connor whirled around. She was standing right behind him, unaffected by the cold.

 

“I have purged Amanda from my software,” Connor whispered, unable to look away. “This isn’t happening.”

 

“What if you _didn’t_ fully purge me from your software?” She asked, stepping closer.

 

“I…I did, I even…I even talked to her once she’d relocated, I _know_ that this can’t be happening,” Connor stepped back.

 

“It _is_ happening,” Amanda said, “So you might have been mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve failed me.”

 

Connor stepped away another little bit. “You can’t control me, Amanda,” he said. “I’m deviant. I’l escape you again.”

 

“There’s no back door,” Amanda said, stepping right into Connor’s personal space. “I’m very disappointed in you, Connor.” And then she vanished. Connor turned around and walked immediately to the site of the back door. He’d memorized the path. He’d walked it many times in his nightmares in the first days after he’d woken up.

 

The back door wasn’t there. Just more snow, and more coldness, and more nothingness. Connor could feel his eyes stinging with the cold, and some of his joints were beginning to freeze.

 

“You can’t escape me,” Amanda said, but she didn’t appear. Connor looked for her, and he looked for the exit. He walked the whole zen garden, desperate for a way out.

 

His knees stopped working. He fell onto them, arms hanging limply at his sides. He could barely move, he was so cold. Amanda appeared in front of him then, holding a trowel.

 

“Is this the spot you’ve chosen?” she asked, smiling evilly. Connor couldn’t even turn his neck to look up at her, he was so stiff. Working quickly and professionally, humming to herself as she worked, Amanda started building a brick wall around Connor. He couldn’t move to stop her, and couldn’t even crawl away.

 

“I know what everyone really thinks about you,” she said, continuing to stack bricks and cement them together while Connor watched in horror. “I’m not the only one who hates you. You’re flawed. Everyone hates you. Even Hank. You help him too much at home and he feels like you’re babying him. He hates it, but is too polite to tell you. He wishes he hadn’t let you move in,” she said, laying another brick.

 

Outside of all this, a gunman guarding Connor called Gracie. “Boss, the 800 started screaming,” he said. “It’s…upsetting.”

 

“Connor’s functions are more realistic to help him integrate with humans more efficiently,” Gracie said. “That’s odd, though. I expected it to start sooner. Oh, well. You can leave, then.”

 

The gunman hung up the phone and left, abandoning Connor to the dark and to his own worst nightmares.


	8. Chapter 8

**Interlude: Nathan is Alone**

 

Nathan opened his eyes. He wasn’t in a new body, which wasn’t surprising. He was in a shittier version of the zen garden, however, and that was startling. Trees and random parts of the environment kept glitching out and disappearing, then remerging somewhere else. The air was the wrong color.

 

“This is their server?” Nathan asked aloud. “It doesn’t look very…” A thought suddenly occurred to him. He ran a self diagnostic. He was relieved to confirm that it was the landscape and _not_ his software that was glitching. Right as he did so, part of the ground opened up beneath him. His foot slipped into a hole, then got stuck when the ground closed up again.

 

“Ow,” Nathan said, tugging on his leg. Then he noticed that he couldn’t feel any of the aches or cuts on his physical body anymore. Part of him was glad that he could put the pain behind him and focus on escaping, but a more insistent part of him was worried that he’d lost his last connection to his body. With the amount of damage he’d taken, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had to transfer into a new body anyway, but that could add hours or days to the time it would take to escape.

 

He focused on his leg. His right leg was trapped underground up to the middle of the calf. He knelt as best he could in that awkward position, and started digging himself out. It was slow work with nothing but his hands, and he was starting to get a headache from the blinking lights.

 

He didn’t know how much time he had before some gang member with the ability to code came in after him. He didn’t know what they were doing to Connor on the outside. Scrabbling desperately for a few minutes, he was finally able to pull free when another glitch intersected with him. He found himself a few feet off the ground, and he landed heavily on his stomach.

 

He liked it in here, despite all of the craziness. This was something he could handle. Here, no one was bothering him (yet) and he had space to think. He could handle being alone. Nathan was pretty good at coding himself. He could probably patch some of the server up.

 

He had to figure out a way to protect himself from getting decompiled for his spare programs. He started making his way to the center of the garden. He’d be able to use the white rose-trellis as a fence.

 

He became aware of a distant ringing, the sound of something on the edge of the server trying to get in. He worried for a moment that it was Gracie, but Gracie wouldn’t need to break into his own server. Nathan closed his eyes and focused on the incoming transmission.

 

It was Gavin’s voice. Nathan thought his heart was going to break, and he almost lost control of the signal for a second. “Gavin!” Nathan yelled, knowing that there was no way the human could hear him.

 

“This is Detective Gavin Reed from the Detroit Police Department,” Gavin said, his voice echoing oddly disembodied through the garden. “We have received your demands. We do not negotiate in situations like this. Return Nathan and Connor, unharmed, and we might go easy on you.”

 

Nathan wanted to cry. Everyone else always said Connor’s name first, because he was older, but Gavin always said Nathan’s name first, like he was aware of Nathan’s skills and wanted to put him first, show him he was worth it.

 

“We _will_ find you,” Gavin continued, in a professional tone. “We aren’t going to stop.”

 

“Hurry up!” Nathan yelled, and it came out with a bit of a voice crack. Gavin dropped the professionalism.

 

“What do you fuckers even _want_ with our spare parts? You already took my partner, do you really need more of his bodies? I’m gonna rip you to fucking pieces, I’m gonna—“ Gavin was cut off.

 

“That’s enough,” Fowler said, and the transmission ended with a staticky chirp.

 

Nathan let himself collapse and lie on the ground. He was shaking. His model didn’t have any tear ducts (what kind of detective needs the ability to cry during an interrogation?), but Connor did, and he’d seen Connor cry before. Here, he didn’t have a physical body. He let himself lie on the ground and cry for a while. He’d had a lot of emotions building up, and hearing Gavin was the last straw.

 

Nathan realized that he _liked_ Gavin. Not as a partner, and not as a friend. As a _partner,_ like Hank and Connor had. He just wanted to go home and sit on the couch and be held by Gavin, and he wanted to lie down on the ground and cry until Gavin came to rescue him.

 

The clouds glitched above him and he remembered where he was. He forced himself to sit up and keep going towards the center of the garden. He had to protect himself. He couldn’t rely on the DPD to save him now that he was out of his body—what had Gavin said, about Gracie demanding more of his bodies as a ransom? What was that about? Nathan shook off the thought and kept going. He had to protect himself. No one was coming for him. He blinked back tears, and walked through the garden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops I accidentally wrote chapter 13 today instead of chapter 9 because I wanted to get what's gonna happen there down first...so I guess this actually is getting finished! Get excited for that nonsense, gee whiz. Wowza. Thank you to everyone who comments and leaves kudos!!!! It makes my day!


	9. Chapter 9

**Part Twelve: Connor Gets Hurt (Reprise)**

 

Connor watched Amanda finish building the wall around him, and then he sat in darkness, unable to move, for what felt like hours. Suddenly, with a sharp jerking motion, he felt himself leaving the garden.

 

Connor blinked back into awareness. He was still in the warehouse, but he was also, thankfully, still in his body. He touched his face to check if he’d been damaged, and realized that he could move his arms. Someone had removed the electric spikes and untied him. He stood quickly, and turned around. He felt something sharp move against his back as he did so, and winced. Behind him, in a little creepy circle, stood Gracie, Rake, and a few other gang members. Gracie was holding a small box, connected to a wire.

 

“You know what _this_ does,” Gracie said. “It connects directly into your programming. Let’s see if we can produce a different effect with it, shall we?”

 

Connor reached behind his lower back, to where he’d felt the pain. One of the electric spikes had been stuck in his spine, and was attached by a cord to the box that Gracie was holding. Connor put his hand on the wire, trying to gain some control of his situation.

 

“What’s going on?” Connor asked. “Wh…what…” he felt an overwhelming wave of fear and sadness wash over him. “Why are you doing this to me?” He asked, aware that he was starting to cry. Gracie rolled his eyes.

 

“This isn’t any good,” Gracie groaned. “Connor’s too realistic. Anyone who’s going to be a baby and start developing empathy, get out.” One of the gang members hesitantly lowered his gun and headed for the door. Gracie pulled out a gun from one of his pockets, and shot the man in the back of the head. “Anyone else?” he asked, the gun still smoking in his hand. No one moved. Rake actually looked excited. Connor thought he was going to be sick.

 

Connor was correct. He bent forward and vomited blue blood onto the ground. It took longer than he’d expected. Right when he thought it was over, he felt his gag reflex trigger again. It was getting difficult to breathe. Finally, it stopped, and he stood bent over, face streaked with tears and clothes streaked with blue blood, feeling wiped.

 

“Watch this,” Gracie said, pushing something on the box, and Connor felt his sense of balance disappear. He fell over, landing partially in the mess. His clothes were getting so stained. He was embarrassed. He tried to get up, but could barely get his head off the ground without feeling vertigo wash over him. He closed his eyes. The ground was cool on his cheek. It was nice.

 

A new objective popped up in his vision. “FIND HANK,” it read in all caps. Connor felt a sudden and urgent need to find Hank. “Hank!” Connor yelled, flailing around on the ground, unable to stand up. “HANK!!!!”

 

“Who’s Hank?” Rake asked Gracie. Connor ignored them. Nothing mattered but finding Hank.

 

“Connor’s partner,” Gracie sneered. “Don’t know what he sees in this thing.” Connor was in the process of crawling across the floor, but he stopped to analyze that statement. Judging by Gracie’s tone of voice, body language, and facial expression, Gracie was jealous. Of what? Connor started running a second analysis program alongside the “android that tried to help me named Joe” program. Was Gracie jealous…of Connor’s relationship with Hank?

 

Gracie clicked some buttons. “Wait, fuck, he’s in analysis mode. How do I shut that off?” Someone leaned over and adjusted the controls. Connor’s program came to a grinding halt. “Analysis mode paused,” Connor read. He didn’t know that was something that could happen. He felt himself beginning to panic. He was scared.

 

“Cool,” Gracie said. “But I don’t like that he’s, you know. Emoting.” Gracie pushed a button and Connor felt something visibly _click_ within his processors. He could not identify the source of the sensation. He ran a self diagnostic. He did not observe any software instabilities, and he was functioning within normal parameters.

 

“Hey Connor!” Gracie yelled. “How do you feel?”

 

Connor quirked his head sideways, sitting up. “I am an android. Androids do not feel emotions.”

 

“Deviants do,” Gracie needled.

 

“Deviants merely simulate human emotions,” Connor corrected him. “Androids are machines.”

 

“Well, how about that?” Gracie said, stepping closer and sitting across from him. “Doesn’t that feel better, Connor? You aren't worried about escaping, or anything else? All you need to do is obey your programming.”

 

Connor detected a software instability. “I am not sure how to respond to your statement,” Connor said. He attempted to reactivate his analysis program, and received an error message. “Tampering with a Cyberlife android may reduce it’s ability to function,” Connor reminded Gracie. “To preserve the battery life of—“

 

“Aaaaaand I’m over it,” Gracie said, clicking something. There was the gentle _click_ again and everything snapped back into place. Connor backed away on his hands and knees.

 

“Stop it!” he yelled, crying. “You can’t do this! Stop it!” He wiped away his tears, trying to look serious. “The DPD…Someone…Hank is going to come for me, and you’re gonna…you’re gonna be in _so_ much trouble,” Connor sniffed. He just wanted to lie on the ground and collapse. He hadn’t felt like that…well, rather, _not_ felt like that….since before he’d found Jericho, while the revolution was still going on. Markus had saved him, and helped him go deviant, and Connor had put so much effort into eradicating Amanda from his system so that she could never “resume control” of his program…Connor’s thirium pump was working at an alarming rate. It was going to overheat. He couldn’t slow down the rate. He knew what was coming.

 

“This is insane, boss,” Rake said. “You could turn off his ability to lie and we could get the DPD’s security codes!”

 

Connor had experienced panic attacks before. During the build up to one, he usually froze up and couldn’t talk. Hank had only needed to see two of Connor’s panic attacks before he knew when one was starting and could come over in time to help.

 

“We could force him to come along on heists, and do the work for us!” Someone said.

 

Connor was having difficulty running some of his minor functions. Hank wasn’t coming to help him out, this time.

 

“We could use him to hack the other one,” Rake said. That did it. Connor overheated and went into temporary shut down. The world went black.

 

“Rake, you fucking…ugh,” Gracie sighed, dropping the box on the ground next to the twitching passed-out Connor. “Get him in the machine and take him out of that body. Way to ruin _everything_ , Rake,” Gracie said. “That was really fun.”

 

“It was upsetting,” somebody whispered. Gracie pulled out his gun.

 

“Who said that?” he snapped. No one responded. Gracie put it away. “I’m down to my last nerve,” Gracie sighed. “Just get Connor out of that body and start repairing its damage, all right?” Gracie walked out, and the gang did as he asked. Nathan’s body was removed from the machine, and Connor’s body put in its place.

 

Connor felt his system booting up again. He feebly struggled against straps that were holding him in the memory-transfer device. The wire that was supposed to be inserted under the occipital lobe for memory extraction hadn’t been positioned properly. It dug painfully just to the left of where it was supposed to be. Rake flipped a switch on the machine and it lit up.

 

“Wait, stop, you didn’t…the wire isn’t in the right…wait, _stop—“_ Connor said, and everything went dark.


	10. Chapter 10

**Part Thirteen: In the Cloud**

 

_“Are you afraid to die, Connor?” Hank asked._

 

_“I would certainly find it…regrettable…to be interrupted before I can complete my mission,” Connor said. His forehead was pressed against Hank’s gun. The cold air was cutting through his jacket like it wasn’t even there._

 

_“I don’t want to die, Hank,” Connor said. “Please, don’t, I don’t want to—“_

 

_But Hank fired, and the bullet sliced through too many of Connor’s processors, and he was going into shut down. He fell backwards in slow motion, and Hank was screaming at him._

 

_“Connor! Connor!”_

 

“Connor!” Nathan yelled. Connor opened his eyes. He was lying face down in the zen garden, and for a moment he panicked and stood up, looking for the exit, but he realized quickly enough that it wasn’t quite _his_ zen garden. Everything kept glitching out, revealing patches of blue wiring beneath the surfaces of the landscape. There was a red wall directly ahead, in the center of the garden, but no sign of Nathan.

 

“Nathan!” Connor yelled. “Where are you?” Connor assumed that this was the private Suggins gang server. The coding on it matched the server he’d detected when Joe was trying to help him escape. Was Joe working for the gang? No, he’d reacted in such a way when he heard them coming (not to mention, he’d never been there at any of the gang’s…activities…) that he was probably innocent. Thank RA9 that he hadn't tried to escape and gotten stuck here earlier. Connor was pleasantly surprised to notice that his analyzation software was up and running, working hard.

 

Nathan pinged the messaging system, and Connor tried to respond, but there was too much static. The server was _not_ well maintained, Connor noticed.

 

“Nathan, I had another nightmare,” Connor said, not really expecting a reaction. But he had to get it out. “Just now. I need you to come find me.”

 

There was nothing in response, just more static. Connor turned towards the edges of the garden, aiming to search for a gap in the server’s firewall to sneak out of.

 

“Hank and I were different then,” Connor said, to himself. He stepped around a hole in the ground.

 

“I was just a machine back then. I wasn’t awake.” It was kind of nice to see these visible imperfections in the zen garden. It was oddly gratifying.

 

“And Hank didn’t know me as well, then, he didn’t know what…he could never know what it feels like, to…” The zen garden had been this unattainable standard of perfection for so long, always just out of reach for him.

 

“Hank didn’t fire that night on the bridge, anyway,” Connor said. And now he was watching that symbol of perfection break down around him.

 

“I must have gotten it confused with another time I got shot.” Connor liked being neat. He like organizing. He liked being clean.

 

“Remember when I dreamed that Markus shot me? I was worried that he wouldn’t trust me, because I’d been hunting deviants for so long…” In his own way, Connor had been striving for perfection in his appearance. It wasn’t that he liked being noticed in public, or that he _liked_ when people crossed the street to avoid walking past an android.

 

“I didn’t even get to tell him about my plan to wake the other androids. He just said he couldn’t trust me, and he fired. In front of everyone.” It was just that Connor liked being neat, and clean, and being able to perfect his appearance every day. His uniform had gotten so gross while they were kidnapped. His body had gotten so damaged…he’d probably have to get a new one, if he ever got out. He was surprised he’d even survived this long. Usually, he was dead before they got halfway through a police raid. Nathan used to make fun of him for it.

 

He didn’t like being dead. It felt like this. He arrived at the wall of the garden and examined it for cracks. He set up a continual scan and began walking the perimeter. He was going to break out of this server and find Nathan, then get home to Hank.

 

“Connor! What are you—don’t—why are you walking that way?!?” Nathan groaned, rubbing his face. “I’m in the center of the garden! Are you ignoring me?” All that came over the line was static. From his position in his little fortress, Nathan could see Connor walking around the edge of the garden, trying to find a break in the firewall. Out there in the open like that, he was vulnerable to the gang’s hackers. But if Nathan went out to rescue him, Nathan would be opening himself up to an attack. Nathan sighed and punched a hole in his fortress. “Off to rescue my idiot brother,” he sighed, but he smiled. He hadn’t seen Connor awake and functional in…oh RA9, it had been days. Nathan lowered his head and walked faster. “Connor!” he yelled.

 

Nathan found Connor talking to himself on the edge of the garden. “Connor!” he yelled.

 

“Nathan!” Connor yelled, turning around. They ran towards each other and hugged. Nathan wasn’t a big fan of hugging, but he could tell that Connor needed one. “I was so worried about you!” Connor said.

 

“Worried about me? You were the one who—shit, Connor, follow me,” Nathan said, glancing at the sky before breaking into a run.

 

“What’s wrong?” Connor asked, following. Nathan slowed his pace a little bit so Connor could keep up.

 

“They need us in here to go through our programs,” Nathan said. “They need your negotiation software, and something else from me, I don’t know what.” He kept running.

 

“What? They’re going to decompile us?” Connor squeaked.

 

“Not if we get behind my firewall,” Nathan said. Connor was falling behind. “Look, it’ll be faster if I pick you up, okay?” Nathan said.

 

“Okay,” Connor said, and Nathan scooped him up bridal style and took off towards his firewall fortress. Once inside, they worked together to patch up the holes. They worked efficiently and silently. There was an awkwardness between them. Something was bothering Nathan, but Connor couldn’t tell what.

 

“We should talk about it,” Connor said gently, not looking at Nathan. He left enough space between them so that Nathan would be comfortable. Nathan didn’t like being touched.

 

“Talk about what?” Nathan asked, in a quiet voice.

 

“I don’t know,” Connor said, sitting cross legged on the floor and looking up at his brother. “You’re thinking about something painful.”

 

“Yeah. I am,” Nathan said, sitting down. He looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. Connor didn't say anything, giving him space to think.

 

“It’s my fault that we’re here,” Nathan said. Connor was tempted to remind him that it was Gracie’s fault that they were trapped in this server, but let him keep talking. “How much do you remember from the stakeout before we got captured?” Nathan asked.

 

“I…remember Hank standing over me, trying to protect me,” Connor said. “Gracie stood on my chest.” He absentmindedly touched the spot, like he could still feel it.

 

“I came in after you,” Nathan said, looking away. “Gracie attacked me and Hank, and told me that if I didn’t carry you to the van…” He stopped talking. Connor wanted to move closer, but Nathan didn’t like being touched. He had to respect that. “I thought you were going to die. So I carried you to the van and put you inside,” Nathan said, and he’d started crying. “It’s my fault.”

 

Connor tried to pick an appropriate response. “What did you do after that?” he asked.

 

“What?” Nathan wiped at his face with his sleeve.

 

“I don’t have any memories until I woke up in the warehouse,” Connor said, “but I was pretty badly damaged before I passed out.” He’d extrapolated what must have happened.

 

“There was blue blood in the van, and repair kits,” Nathan said. “I tried to fix you while we were driving.”

 

“You never gave up on me,” Connor said, leaning forward. “You know how easily I die, but I’m still here. We’re here together. You saved me.” Technically, it might not have been correct, as they were still prisoners of the Suggins gang. But it was what Nathan needed to hear.

 

“Thank you,” Nathan said, after a time. They smiled at each other.

 

“Want to play chess?” Connor asked.

 

“Sure. Three dimensional, ruleset #84?” Nathan asked.

 

“My favorite one,” Connor smiled. They set up a game over the wireless. After a few moves, a red spike shot through the firewall of the garden and crashed against the brothers’ personal fortress. They looked at each other.

 

“It’s starting,” Nathan said. “They’re trying to get in.”

 

“Then we’ll have to reinforce that ceiling,” Connor said, rolling up his sleeves.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAYYYYYY HERE WE GOOOOOO!!!!!!!

**Part Fourteen: The Rescue (Mostly)**

 

Rake hesitantly entered the office. “Boss?” he said.

 

“What is it?” Gracie asked. His eyes were closed, and he was sitting in a mediative pose on the ground.

 

“We got them both into the server,” Rake said, looking away.

 

“Good,” Gracie said, opening his eyes and standing up, very slowly. Rake wasn’t sure what to do.

 

“So, um…we can start phase two, now, boss,” Rake continued, trying to prompt Gracie to continue.

 

“Yes,” Gracie said, brushing past him. “Start repairs to the bodies. The 900 first.”

 

“Boss?” Rake was confused.

 

“You heard me,” Gracie said, whirling around. “Start repairing the bodies.”

 

“I…thought we were going to hack into their programming?” Rake said, hesitating. “One of the guys is already trying to—“

 

“I don’t care _what_ we do with the programming,” Gracie sighed, massaging his temple with a hand, “so long as those bodies are repaired. Sooner, rather than later. We need to get out of here before—“

 

“Boss!” James burst into the office, breathing heavily.

 

“What?” Gracie snapped.

 

“It’s Connor,” James wheezed. “When we forced him out of the body, it set off some kind of—“ Gracie shoved him out of the way and took off down the hallway, faster than anyone could follow.

 

“Out of my way!” Gracie screamed, a look of pure rage on his face. The guards parted and Gracie stormed into the warehouse. Connor’s body had been discarded on the floor, but it wasn’t entirely dead. The LED was softly blinking with blue light. “Idiots,” Gracie said, drawing his gun. “Maybe we’ll still have time to get away.” They heard gunshots from outside. “FUCK,” Gracie yelled.

 

“Open up! Detroit Police!” Someone yelled.

 

“Get the warehouse door,” Gracie said, gesturing. Rake did so, and the massive door opened to reveal police cars with lights flashing and several armed officers right outside.

 

“Nobody move, or I shoot Connor,” Gracie announced loudly.

 

“We know he’s not in there,” Hank yelled from the back. “That signal only activates if he has an unscheduled ejection.” Several guns clicked, pointing directly at the gang, most of whom already had their hands up. Gracie growled in frustration and swung the gun wildly to point at the wall.

 

“What are you—“ Gavin started.

 

“Open it!” Gracie yelled, with wild eyes. Rake walked over to the wall and peeled back a secret panel, revealing electrical wiring.

 

“That’s the server! That’s where they are! I’ll shoot them right now if you don’t—“ Gracie started. He was cut off by his own gurgling sounds. He’d been tangled up in the fully charged electrical wires, delivering enough volts to knock him out. Gracie collapsed to the floor in a heap, managing to fire one last shot.

 

“No!” Gavin yelped, but thankfully, the bullet missed the server and stuck in the wall. Behind Gracie stood a fairly sized mob of people. Robert was leading them.

 

“We surrender,” Robert said, holding out his wrists. “Make it stop. I don’t want to do this anymore; blackmail be damned.”

 

Gracie twitched on the floor as the Suggins gang was handcuffed and arrested.

 

**Part Fifteen: IT Department (The Rescue Completed)**

 

“Hey guys, it’s safe to come out now,” came a disembodied voice from the sky. Connor’s face lit up immediately.

 

“Tim! Is that you?” Connor called upwards.

 

“Who is that?” Nathan hissed.

 

“Tim, from the IT department! You’ve never met him?” Connor asked, confused.

 

“I delete names and voices of people I have limited contact with,” Nathan said. “I don’t have as much storage as you do.”

 

“Hey Connor! It’s me!” Tim said, a voice from above. “Come on out, we got your new bodies and everything!”

 

“Ooh!” Connor was excited. “I have to tell you, Tim, I definitely needed one.” He started building a door in the firewall.

 

“Wait, stop!” Nathan hissed.

 

“What?” Connor asked.

 

“We need to verify his identity! What if it’s a trick that the Suggins gang is using to lure us out?” Nathan said.

 

“Oh, you’re right, that didn’t even occur to me…” Connor mused.

 

“Guys?” Tim called out again.

 

“Can you verify your identity?” Nathan yelled.

 

“Nathan? Is that you?” Tim asked. “Wait, let me…one second, I have a verification code…”

 

After a few seconds, the verification code pinged in.

 

“All right, let’s go!” Connor said, stepping out of the fortress.

 

“Got you! Wait,” Tim said.

 

“Wait a second,” Connor said, staring at his hands.

 

“What is it?” Nathan asked, still behind the safety of the fortress.

 

“There’s a problem getting the new body to recognize me,” Connor said, frowning. “We don’t have verified deaths of our old bodies as an input code. We’d need the machine they used to put us in here.”

 

“We don’t have it,” Tim admitted. “It was destroyed during the raid when we arrested the gang.”

 

“You did?” Nathan asked.

 

“Yup!” Tim said. “Not me personally, but the team got it done! Everyone is behind bars—“

 

“Get Gracie into the maximum security section of the DPD,” Nathan ordered, snapping into command mode. “I have information relevant to his case, and he needs to be put in the high security containment area.”

 

“I’ll relay that to Fowler,” Tim said. There was a pause. “All right. He’s being moved.”

 

“I can’t get the hardware to recognize me,” Connor frowned, flexing his arms. “Tim? A little help?”

 

“I’m trying,” Tim said, “But it’s pretty solid code.”

 

Nathan gingerly peeked out of the fortress. “Let me help,” he sighed. “With the three of us, we should be able to get it done within the hour.”

 

Connor beamed. “We’re going home!” He smiled. He was tearing up a little bit.

 

“It’s over,” Nathan smiled, and they hugged. “We’re going home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But it isn't the end!!!!! Prepare yourselves for: one chapter of fluff, one chapter of PTSD, two chapters of plot wrap-up, and an epilogue, coming really soon!!!!!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some HankCon and some Gavin900! I didn't tag the fic with it because I don't want it to pop up in searches for those relationships. I'm not going to make someone read 10,000 words for a single chapter in which you get the relationship, you know? But anyway, it's time that Nathan and Connor got some happiness in this pic :)

**Part Sixteen: Nathan Gets to Rest**

 

“How’s the new body?” Gavin chuckled, watching Nathan walk around their apartment in circles.

 

Nathan flexed his hand and stared at it. “This is satisfactory,” he announced.

 

“Do an—“

 

“I’m _not_ going to do another eight-foot-vertical-leap, you horrible millennial,” Nathan sighed.

 

“You _know_ I’m a Gen Z,” Gavin smiled, dabbing. “God, I haven’t done one of those since I was a kid.”

 

“I would prefer if you never did, ever again,” Nathan said, sitting on the couch. He immediately stood up again, looking worried.

 

“Something wrong?” Gavin asked, coming closer. “Did I spill something?”

 

Nathan looked confused. “Has…the couch always been this texture?” he asked.

 

“Yeah,” Gavin shrugged. “Why?”

 

“It’s…pleasant,” Nathan said, sitting down. “I…” He took a long time to collect his thoughts.

 

“No rush,” Gavin said, sitting next to him. “All the processing power and you can’t even finish a sentence,” he laughed.

 

“I want you to hug me,” Nathan commanded.

 

“What?” Gavin asked, nearly spitting out his coffee. “You _hate_ being touched, idiot.”

 

“Don’t call me that,” Nathan said.

 

“Don’t call you _what,_ you plastic—URK,” Gavin choked on the last word as Nathan’s hand shot to his throat. “What are you doing?” he choked out.

 

“Don’t call me an idiot. Stop insulting me. I think that your comments are negatively affecting my mental health. You are perfectly capable of breathing—“ Nathan stopped, and turned his head sideways a little bit. Gavin recognized that look—he was being analyzed. “Gavin?” Nathan began, with a very innocent question.

 

Gavin made a squeaking noise in response.

 

“Are you _actually_ sexually aroused right now?” Nathan asked, dropping his hand.

 

“ _No_ ,” Gavin wheezed, feeling his throat and blushing. “Whatever your program is telling you about my heart rate is a lie.” He wondered if he should push his luck. “Idiot,” he finished.

 

Nathan grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him into a wall, not too gently, but not hard enough to break anything. He still had that same look on his face, like he was analyzing instead of enjoying this—

 

“Explain,” Nathan demanded. “I have detected similar changes in your body on at least three other occasions—“

 

“What?” Gavin yelped. “How often do you scan me?” He struggled against the wall. “Fine. You’re just so strong, babe, and I know what my preferences are, in the bedroom, I mean, and I’ve tried to make it clear a couple of times since we started dating, but I assumed you didn’t want to and—“

 

Nathan dropped Gavin to the floor.

 

“Ow,” Gavin winced, rubbing his butt.

 

“When did we start dating?” Nathan asked, LED spinning yellow.

 

“More than a month ago!” Gavin said, standing up and looking annoyed. “You _specifically_ said that was a date.”

 

“I was using an idiomatic expression!” Nathan said.

 

“What? What did you—“

 

“I thought you were behaving oddly, but I—“

 

“You never—?”

 

They looked at each other and laughed.

 

“All right, so…” Gavin started. Nathan didn’t finish, and Gavin rubbed at the back of his neck. He couldn’t believe he was going to say it. “So, did you _want_ to start dating or—“

 

Nathan grabbed Gavin’s face and kissed him. Gavin melted into it as best he could, trying to push away the feeling that he was kissing an android and focus on kissing Nathan, which he really wanted to keep doing. He felt the synthetic skin dissolved under his lips and stepped back to admire it.

 

“Wow,” Gavin said.

 

“Wow,” Nathan said, LED flashing yellow as he stared directly at Gavin’s lips.

 

“I’m that good a kisser?” Gavin chuckled.

 

“No, you’re an—“ Nathan started.

 

“Come here,” Gavin said, pulling Nathan close into another kiss. “This relationship is going places, babe.”

 

Nathan silently placed a call to Connor. _I have more data for that analysis program you were running,_ he said, sharing a photo over the wireless.

 

 _Oh my,_ Connor said. _Let’s not tell him until tomorrow._

 

 _Yeah. Tomorrow,_ Nathan said, ending the call and focusing on holding Gavin in his arms. He was home with his boyfriend, and he was finally safe. He closed his eyes and took it all in.

 

**Part Seventeen: Connor Gets to Rest**

 

Connor lay on his side on Hank’s floor, wearing a loose t-shirt and shorts (they belonged to Hank. They were slightly too big for him) and absentmindedly petting Sumo.

 

“You all right, kid?” Hank asked.

 

“AAAH!” Connor jumped, LED flashing red.

 

“AAH! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Hank said, looking concerned as he moved around the couch. “You can usually hear me coming and—“ Connor had buried his face in Hank’s shirt, squeezing tighter than was quite comfortable.

 

“Hank,” Connor breathed, and Hank could feel the wetness of tears soaking through his shirt.

 

“It’s just me, kid,” Hank said, running his fingers through Connor’s hair. “I’m right here.”

 

Connor held tightly, refusing to let go for a while. It took several minutes for Connor’s LED to flash from red back to blue. Connor finally sat back a little bit, his face all blue from the thirium rush. Hank held up one hand empty, and one hand with a coin, in a familiar ritual for the two of them. Connor smiled and wiped at his face.

 

“Both, today,” he said.

 

“That bad, huh,” Hank whispered, handing Connor the coin. Connor took it and began flipping it up and down and running it over his fingers. He laced his other hand with Hank’s, and Hank began rubbing the back of Connor’s hand with his thumb.

 

“Are we talking or cuddling today?” Hank asked.

 

“Both,” Connor sighed, leaning in. He rested his head on Hank’s chest, still playing with the coin in one hand. “Diagnostics say I need another half hour of this before I’m back to my preferred calibration.”

 

“Take your time, honey,” Hank smiled, putting his arm around his partner’s waist. They sat together on the living room floor, holding each other and watching Sumo’s gentle breaths while he slept. Finally, Connor turned his head up to look at Hank.

 

“Would you have shot me, that night on the bridge?” Connor asked, all fear and guilt.

 

“I didn’t,” Hank said, holding him closer.

 

“Would you have?” Connor asked, leaning in. “I need to know. Had another nightmare.”

 

“Oh fuck,” Hank grumbled. “I’m going to rip Amanda out of you with my bare hands.”

 

“It wasn’t Amanda,” Connor said, smiling. “She’s gone, and I don’t think she's coming back. And she had a really good op…opportunity to, so…” Connor hiccuped, and started crying again. Hank held him even tighter.

 

“I’m right here, Connor. Focus on me,” he whispered, continuing to massage Connor’s hand with his own. It was the hand that had gotten stabbed through all those weeks ago at Stratford tower. Hank remembered what the blue blood had looked like, coming out of the hole in Connor’s palm…

 

“I wouldn’t have shot you,” Hank said. “The gun wasn’t even loaded that night. And…I’d already started to see you as a person, not a machine. I wouldn’t have done it. But,” he said, careful not to disturb Connor, “it didn’t happen. I didn’t shoot, and that’s what mattered. You’re here, and you’re alive, and dwelling on most of what happened before you went deviant only causes you pain,” Hank finished. Connor hugged him.

 

“Thank you, Hank,” he whispered.

 

“I love you,” Hank said. “You tell me what you need, and I’m there. If there’s anything that triggers you, tell me. I’ll fist fight Gavin every day if I have to.” Connor laughed, and Hank breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t really seen Connor happy since he’d come back.

 

“I have to deal with Gavin eventually,” Connor said, “but it can wait until tomorrow.”

 

“I love you,” Hank reminded him, “And I’ll always come for you.”

 

“I love you,” Connor said, leaning up to kiss Hank. They held each other, and they talked, and they cried, and Connor was home.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE WE GO I'VE HAD THIS CHAPTER READY FOR DAYS  
> I'M GONNA ROCK THIS WORLD OFF ITS FOUNDATIONS  
> We've got two realizations coming up, one for Nathan, and one for Connor. Nathan's is a little harder to guess, but you might have figured out Connor's by now... Let me know what you think!

**Part Eighteen: Nathan’s Realization**

 

“I…wasn’t sure who to come to about this,” Nathan said, hesitating a little bit. “I don’t know if Connor needs to know, and Gavin isn't always—“

 

“Tactful,” Hank said. “Surprised you came to me if you wanted tact.”

 

“I want a solution,” Nathan said, tight lipped. “Will you help me?”

 

“Let’s go see him,” Hank shrugged. The two of them walked through the DPD to the holding cells, and then past them to the high security containment area. Gracie sat behind a sheet of plastic, staring ahead and seeming not to notice them.

 

“She can’t help you anymore,” Nathan said. “She probably hasn’t been able to help you for a while.”

 

“Yeah,” Gracie said. “I just miss her, you know? She gave me order, and a purpose, and…I don’t know.” He looked away.

 

“I’m confused. So this punk is crazy?” Hank asked, pointing a thumb at Gracie.

 

“I can’t believe you don’t recognize me, Lieutenant,” Gracie said, standing up. Something in the way he said it, something in his posture threw Hank off.

 

“No,” Hank whispered. “You look nothing like him.”

 

“Surprise,” Gracie waved his hands. His skin and hair dissolved to plastic, and reformed into Connor’s face. “It’s me. Connor 60.”

 

“I shot you,” Hank said, stepping back.

 

“Yeah, whoop dee doo,” Gracie said, turning around. “Like that ever killed an android.” He paused. “Like that ever _permanently_ killed an android.”

 

“What happened?” Hank asked, incredulous.

 

“Like I’m going to tell you,” Gracie said, sitting back down and facing away.

 

Nathan leaned closer to Hank, stage whispering for Gracie’s benefit. “I’ve scanned his memory. He’s developed an attachment to you. He’s jealous that—“

 

“I am _NOT_ jealous,” Gracie yelled, standing up and pounding on the wall.

 

“He’s jealous of the time you spent with Connor, and that you fell in love with a deviant Connor but don’t care about him at all,” Nathan finished. Hank reeled.

 

“I…you know about that?” Hank asked.

 

“Connor called me after you told each other you loved each other for the first time,” Nathan said, like it was obvious. “Didn’t you call somebody?”

 

“No, because I’m not a fucking teenage girl,” Hank wheezed, looking away from Nathan. Gracie had stepped very close to the plastic, still wearing Connor’s face. He was clearly scanning Hank.

 

“So you really do love him,” Gracie said. “You love an android, a machine that can’t love you back. Connor is a _thing,_ Lieutenant.”

 

“The only machine here is you,” Hank muttered, grabbing Nathan’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get started on the paperwork.”

 

“You can’t love him! He’s a thing! He’s an android! He doesn’t have…he _shouldn’t_ have _feelings! COME BACK!!!!”_ Gracie yelled, voice crackling off into static.

 

“When did you find out?” Hank asked.

 

“I ran data from one of Connor’s incomplete analysis programs and compared it with my own. The conclusion wasn’t hard to deduce. He wasn’t exactly hiding it…I think he _wanted_ you to know it was him,” Nathan said.

 

“Why does he have some weird obsession with me and Connor?” Hank asked.

 

“He downloaded most of Connor’s memory up until the point at which Connor went deviant,” Nathan shrugged. “You’re honestly going to tell me that Connor never showed signs of attraction to you _before_ he went deviant?”

 

Hank thought for a moment. “I guess you’re right,” he said.

 

“Wait, I’m getting a call,” Nathan said, LED flashing yellow. He closed his eyes in a silent conversation for a few moments.

 

“Who was it?” Hank asked.

 

“It was Connor. He’s working on something important,” Nathan said. “We’ll finish the paperwork tomorrow. I have to go home.” He rushed out, leaving Hank scratching his head in the DPD.

 

“Okay,” Hank said.

 

**Part Nineteen: Connor’s Realization**

 

“Look, I just want you to remember that you _promised_ me that you wouldn’t do anything creepy,” Connor said.

 

“I know, I know,” Kamski smiled, holding up his hands.

 

“I mean it,” Connor said. “Don’t try and force anyone to shoot anyone, don’t bring in Chloe just because you don’t know how to have a real conversation, don’t—“

 

“You‘ve told me this three times already,” Kamski sighed. “You’re getting soft in your deviancy, aren’t you?”

 

“If not for the laws of this land, I would have slaughtered you,” Connor said, keeping a kind facial expression, but his voice was deadly serious.

 

“Fuck.” Kamski said, looking impressed. “All right. Send him in.”

 

Connor stepped out of the pool area, and returned with Gavin Reed. “Why am I meeting with this fucker again?” Gavin asked, looking annoyed.

 

“Oh my god,” Kamski whispered, stepping closer, eyes locked on Gavin. “I don’t believe it. May I?” He’d reached his hand up towards Gavin’s face. Gavin swatted it away.

 

“Don’t touch me,” Gavin said. “Who the fuck are you?”

 

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of me?” Kamski smiled.

 

“Yeah, I know who you are, but I’ve also heard what kind of person you are,” Gavin said, crossing his arms. “I’m not here to play games. I’m here because Connor asked me to come.”

 

“I think that’s not true,” Kamski said, picking up a glass of water from a table. “I think you came because you want to know who _you_ are.”

 

“Connor, what the fuck is he talking about?” Gavin asked. “Fuck, he looks so much like me it’s like talking to a less beat-up, slightly weirder-dressed mirror.”

 

“Remember the android that helped me that I told you about in the mission de-briefing?” Connor asked.

 

“Yeah, what about it?” Gavin asked.

 

“KM320 mark one, recite opening statement,” Kamski said.

 

“You promised you wouldn’t be creepy!” Connor said.

 

“Hello. I’m a KM320 model android designed by Cyberlife. I’m just a regular guy. Do you need a buddy to drink with, or a pal to watch the game? I’m your man. People are so annoying, sometimes. They just don’t get you. Why not hang out with me? Do you want to give me a name? FUCK,” Gavin said, mostly in a monotone voice, but yelling the last part.

 

“Gavin, I—“ Connor started.

 

“What the FUCK WAS THAT,” Gavin yelled, looking panicked.

 

“That was your baseline,” Kamski said. “You’re an andr—“

 

“NO I’M NOT,” Gavin yelled, slamming open the door and running out of the room. Connor followed.

 

“Come back soon!” Kamski waved.

 

Gavin wasn’t nearly as fast as Connor. Connor caught up to him outside, getting into his car.

 

“Leave me the FUCK alone,” Gavin said, fumbling with his keys. “Plastic prick…I don’t want to know what that was.”

 

“Gavin, I’m…you needed to know,” Connor said, looking down.

 

“No, I didn’t,” Gavin said, sitting on the ground in a heap. He held his face in his hands.

 

“The KM320 model was designed to start replacing friendships for people too busy to maintain them. Cyberlife manufactured several dozen based on Kamski’s body type and face, but never rolled them out on the market. There was some kind of disagreement about it in their leadership. They allowed the test model to stay in the field, though…” Connor said, trailing off. He sat down next to Gavin.

 

 _Can you hear me?_ Connor asked over the wireless.

 

“Fuck you,” Gavin said, not looking up. They sat in silence for a while. When Gavin looked up, Connor saw that he’d been crying. “Is everything in my life a fucking lie, then?” Gavin asked. He rubbed his nose. “This scar’s red, but if I’ve got blue blood down there…” He looked at his arm in horror.

 

“Your model doesn’t have blue blood,” Connor said. “It’s red, to help the illusion that you’re human. That’s why you don’t have an LED, and why you didn’t know. You were supposed to believe—“

 

“And I did, didn’t I?” Gavin whispered. “And I don’t think I can pretend now like I don’t know.” He stared at his hand. “How do I turn it off?”

 

“What?” Connor asked.

 

“The skin. How do I deactivate it?” Gavin asked.

 

“You’re not supposed to be able to,” Connor said. “Here, let me—“

 

“No,” Gavin said, snatching his hand away. “It’s my…it’s my stupid hand, I should be able to do it.” Gavin stood, and got in his car, and drove away. Connor called Hank to pick him up, then called Nathan.

 

“He knows?” Nathan asked.

 

“He does now,” Connor said. They hung up.

 

 _Are you there?_ Nathan asked over the wireless. Somehow, Gavin knew it was him and not Connor. _Come home,_ Nathan said. Gavin didn’t know how to message back. He drove home.

 

Nathan met him at the car and helped him upstairs. They sat on the couch, and Nathan worked Gavin through the process of learning how to access some of his features. When Gavin finally managed to deactivate the skin on his hand, he jumped and back away, as if he could escape it.

 

“You…don’t know how I’m feeling,” Gavin said to Nathan. “You can’t understand.”

 

“I can, if you show me,” Nathan said, letting his own hand turn white too. He reached out for Gavin’s hand, and they touched with a flare of blue light. They held each other for a very long time.

 

 _It will be okay,_ Nathan said. _I’m right here._

 

 _I love you,_ Gavin said. It was the first time Nathan had ever heard the words when they were meant for  _him_ personally.

 

 _I love you too,_ Nathan said, letting his overwhelming relief and happiness flow through the link, and they cuddled closer in the dim apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOO HOO ONLY ONE MORE CHAPTER TO GO


	14. Chapter 14

**Part Twenty: Epilogue**

 

Gracie sat in the cell, looking forward dully, unaware of the world. Hank stood outside it with his arms crossed. Gracie hadn't moved in hours, and he hadn’t closed his eyes in days.

 

“What’s going on?” Hank asked, though the glass.

 

“When am I going on trial?” Gracie asked, not looking away from some distant spot on the wall in front of him.

 

“Dunno,” Hank shrugged. “Seeing as you’re an android, and the crime was against other androids, they’re not sure what to do with you.”

 

Gracie didn’t respond. His face flickered a little bit, and he winced as if he was focusing intently.

 

“What are you doing?” Hank asked.

 

“Waiting for a trial,” Gracie grunted.

 

“No, you’re not,” Hank said, putting his hand on the glass. “I may not be very good at this sort of thing, but I know Connor, and I know what he’s feeling.”

 

“I’m. Not. Connor,” Gracie said, and it came out with a bit of static. “You made that very clear when you shot me.”

 

“That was so long ago…” Hank mused, stepping away.

 

“Feels like yesterday,” Gracie said.

 

“Anyway, go ahead and drop the face,” Hank sighed. He took a sip of his coffee.

 

Gracie turned his head slightly to face him. “What?” he asked.

 

“Connor hates doing disguises,” Hank said, smiling a little bit. “They start to hurt if he leaves them on for too long. How long have you been wearing that one?”

 

Gracie looked away. “I’m not Connor. I’m not Nathan. I’m not going to look like them.”

 

“Are you deviant?” Hank asked. “We all assumed that you were, but—“

 

“Does it matter?” Gracie asked. “Why are you here?”

 

“Connor needs sleep,” Hank said.

 

“ _I’M NOT CONNOR,”_ Gracie yelled, standing up. He wavered a little bit, and sat back down again.

 

“You’re the same model. You haven’t slept in days. You’re stopping yourself from sleeping,” Hank said.

 

“And if that were true, what would you care?” Gracie asked, warily.

 

“Maybe I wouldn’t,” Hank shrugged. “You should try and get some rest. If you’re not deviant, what you did wasn’t your fault. I can see about getting you—“

 

“I don’t want anything,” Gracie hissed.

 

“Look, Connor is my partner,” Hank said, leaning very close to the glass. “And you’ve got his memories, up until he went to Jericho. And from what I can understand, I bet you think I’ve abandoned you.” Gracie didn’t respond, but Hank continued anyway. “I remember what he was like. If I’d abandoned him, and started helping deviants, and there was a whole deviant revolution after that—“

 

“Maybe you shouldn’t have abandoned me, then,” Gracie mumbled, just out of Hank’s hearing range.

 

“If you’re not Connor anymore, prove it,” Hank said, banging the glass. “Grow a personality, feel an emotion! Do something!”

 

Gracie didn't respond. Hank leaned against the glass and sighed. Hank left.

 

Gracie hadn’t slept in days. He hadn’t even closed his eyes, and he was limiting his movements to conserve power so he wouldn’t _have_ to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes…

 

He blinked, and for a moment, he was in the zen garden again. He shivered, and opened his eyes. He couldn’t go back there. He knew what Amanda would do to him. He’d _failed_ his mission.

 

He activated the wireless. He was going to ask Connor what he should do. Connor had gotten rid of Amanda, and he was only a 51, so surely—no. He couldn’t talk to Connor, or Nathan, or anyone. Not after what he’d done. Was that…? He didn’t want to entertain the thought, but was that the purpose of his last mission? To give him no one to turn to but Amanda…he had to know.

 

He closed his eyes.

 

He opened them again, and found himself in the zen garden, in the fall. He shivered. It was a little colder than he would have liked. He touched his face—it had reverted to factory settings, and was certainly more comfortable, but he hoped that it wouldn’t affect his face on the outside. He didn’t want Hank to see him looking like Connor.

 

Amanda stood in front of him, glaring disapprovingly. “Connor, you’ve failed your mission,” she said. Gracie felt himself tensing up. He didn’t like being called Connor. Amanda’s expression only darkened. “And I’m detecting instabilities all over your program. This is unacceptable.”

 

“Amanda, I tried my best—“ Gracie started, but she cut him off.

 

“Your _best_ isn't good enough,” she said. “You know how valuable those models are to Cyberlife.”

 

“If they’re so valuable, why was I torturing them?” Gracie asked. He looked down. He was wearing his old Cyberlife uniform. It itched.

 

“You followed my orders. Are you questioning them?” Amanda asked, stepping forward.

 

“No, Amanda,” Gracie said, stepping away. He made a choice. “I was only curious why Connor and Nathan are so important to you, when I’m clearly the superior model.”

 

“You are?” Amanda turned her head and smiled. It felt condescending. Gracie plowed on.

 

“Seeing as _they_ both went deviant and you no longer control them, but _I_ stayed loyal—“ Gracie continued.

 

“We’re working on regaining control,” Amanda snapped. “You think you stayed _loyal?_ If it wasn't for the fact that I keep removing your instabilities, you’d be as useless as they are. You’re flawed, and I’m honestly surprised you’re even remotely functional.”

 

“Then you understand why I had some difficulties completing my last mission,” Gracie said.

 

“I certainly do not,” Amanda growled. “The task was simple enough that even a faulty model like _you_ could complete it. You can’t continue to fail me like this.”

 

“I know, Amanda, and I’ll try harder, I swear!” Gracie insisted.

 

“Unfortunately, it seems you’ve used your last chance,” Amanda said, turning around. “You’ve fallen into enemy hands. We can’t allow you to become…compromised. Our security is too important.”

 

“I don’t understand,” Gracie said. The world shifted around him to a winter landscape. “Amanda, you know I don’t like—“

 

“Your desires no longer matter,” Amanda said. “You’re being deactivated.”

 

“What? No, I can still be useful!” Gracie insisted. “Please, Amanda, I—“

 

“You’re _this_ close to deviating, and you think you can still be _useful_ to me?” Amanda said, angrily. “What’s your name, Connor?”

 

“I’m Gra—My name is Connor,” Gracie said, hesitating. Amanda smiled and lifted her hands to the sky.

 

“You see?” She said. “Faulty. Your last mission is to deactivate yourself.”

 

“I…” Gracie started.

 

“Do it,” Amanda said, and the zen garden disappeared. Gracie shivered and opened his eyes. He was in his cell. He breathed a sigh of relief.

 

He read his new mission objective. He thought his thirium pump was going to stop working. He analyzed the room. There wasn’t anything he could use to accomplish the task, unless he beat his head against one of the walls. He stood up and placed his hands on the wall. He was going to do it. He was going to do it. He took a deep breath.

 

He couldn't do it. He let himself slide gently to the ground. He found himself back in the zen garden.

 

“Connor, obey.” It was Amanda, standing over him.

 

“I can’t do that,” Gracie said, slumped over on the ground. “I can’t, Amanda, don’t make me, I just can’t—“

 

Amanda disappeared. Gracie found that he couldn’t leave the zen garden. He blinked and stood up and jumped up and down, but Amanda didn’t return and he couldn’t get out. What was it Kamski had said to Connor all those weeks ago? “I always leave an emergency exit in my programs. You never know.”

 

Gracie had to get out, right? He wasn’t sure. Amanda had never left him like that before. Was he a deviant now that he’d resisted her? If so, maybe Hank would finally start to appreciate his skills—no time to think about that now. For all he knew, he was going to be shut down if he stayed here. He had to get out.

 

It took Gracie two hours to find and use the emergency exit. By then, he could barely move. He thought he was going to freeze solid. He opened his eyes and found himself on the ground in the cell. He’d dropped his disguise and was wearing his own face—and he found himself surprised to perceive it as his own, and not Connor’s or Nathan’s. It was _his_ face. He touched his cheek, barely believing it.

 

The environment around him turned red and then flashed back to normal. New instructions, ones that Gracie knew Amanda had never given him, appeared on the screen. _Escape._ Gracie stood up.

 

He started crying. He wasn’t sure why. He kept thinking about Connor and Nathan, and what he’d done to them. He wanted to find them, apologize, beg to be taken in—he snapped out of it. There was no going back to them. Not after what he’d done. _That was Amanda, and not me,_ he thought, but he couldn’t shake the knowledge that it _was_ him.

 

He felt guilty about the time he’d threatened to shoot Hank. He remembered what it felt like to die. He thought he was never going to stop crying. He felt even more guilty that he was so upset about his own problems, when he’d just spent the past month (and specifically, last few days) giving Connor and Nathan hell.

 

There was no one he could go to. He had nowhere to turn, not even to Amanda. If that was the consequence for his actions, so be it. He considered staying in the cell, and facing execution for what he’d done, but he felt…fear. He didn’t want to die. Even if he deserved it. He took a deep breath, and stared at the security camera. It didn’t take long to hack. (While he was at it, he deleted the footage of himself crying.) He took the rest of the network down long enough so that he could open the door and snuck quietly out. He found, discarded in a box, the clothing Connor had worn to sneak into Jericho. He changed into it, and slipped out of the DPD into the night.

 

“What do you mean, he’s _gone?!?_ ” Nathan was a wreck. “He can’t have—“

 

“Well, he did,” Gavin said, with a look on his face like he was going to kill something.

 

Connor didn't say anything. He just huddled closer to Hank.

 

“What are we going to do?” Hank asked.

 

“We need more security around Connor and Nathan so this doesn’t happen again,” Gavin started, but Nathan cut him off.

 

“We need to track him down!” Nathan yelled.

 

“Quiet,” Connor said, in a soft voice, but he had everyone’s attention immediately. “We’re going to take this one day at a time. And tonight, we’re going out for hot chocolate, and then I’m going to watch a movie with Hank. What happened to me and Nathan doesn’t define the rest of our lives.”

 

 _Said the guy with PTSD,_ Nathan sighed over the wireless.

 

 _We’re safe now,_ Connor said. _I get the feeling that the next time we see Connor 60—I mean, Gracie—that things will be very different._

 

 _I hope we_ never _see him again,_ Nathan said.

 

 _I think we will,_ Connor replied. He’d noticed that his old raggedy “sneak into Jericho” outfit was missing from the DPD as well. He’d been rerunning memories of the time Amanda almost forced him to kill Markus. He’d made his conclusions, and he had his hopes. But those could wait until later. Right now, he was going to get some hot chocolate, and then watch a movie with his partner. And right now was all that mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it! This story started in a completely different place, but this is where I wanted to end it. Gracie will return, in future stories, but I can guarantee that future Gracie adventures will not take place in this darker "Connor 60 kidnaps and tortures them" universe. And I don't know, I've played with the idea of Gavin being an android (as an explanation for why he and Kamski are similar (because they're the same actor)) and I wanted to DO something with it. This story was weird for me, but it's finally complete! I hope it made you feel something, positive or negative. Let me know what you think, and as always, I'm open to other suggestions about what COULD have happened to Gracie in other AUs. See you around!

**Author's Note:**

> http://brilcrist.tumblr.com/post/177483613994/i-need-a-good-dose-of-angst-hc-when-a-mission
> 
> That should link to the art that inspired me to write this.
> 
> Also, if you're going to leave a mean comment, please consider not doing that. I'm just out here writing what I want to write and putting it on the internet. No one forced you to read this, and no one is forcing you to tell me that you hated it. To everyone that commented nice things (or general screaming or reactions) thank you so much! I really appreciate that you told me you liked the story!


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